James Miller » Random

SmugMug Rocks

James — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:08:23 +0000

After not having my photo gallery online for about a year, I finally got around to getting it back. I was previously self-hosting the gallery with Gallery2, but that software turned out to really just be a pain in the neck for my gallery and all the other galleries I host.

SmugMug came to the rescue! Allison has been using SmugMug for her portrait photography lately, and it’s proven itself to be nothing short of awesome. The site is very fast and responsive, the upload tools are great, slideshows work (fancy that), and the cost is reasonable. If you want an account and want $5 off, use this referral code: sJz9wIbaT3urU

Check out my pictures at http://bensie.smugmug.com.

jQuery: Focus the first input of a text field

James — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:23:28 +0000

If you have forms around your site (logins, registrations, etc), you might want to automatically focus those fields so the user has less clicking around to do. We want to do this unobtrusively, and don’t want to focus it if the field already has data in it (editing existing forms). Here’s the jQuery code to pull it off:

Developing For The iPhone: Part I

James — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:58:27 +0000

Ever since Apple started up the App Store, I’ve been dying to dig in to Objective-C and write an application for the iPhone (no, I don’t own an iPhone yet). I’m certainly not alone, as there are now like 100,000 apps available on the store. I bought a book, read through a lot of the developer documentation, but finally something even better came along — Stanford is posting the lectures and slides on iTunes U for iPhone Application Programming. While the lecturers are not the best speakers, the content of the class is fantastic so far. I’ve watched 4 episodes and have grasped more by watching those than all of the prior reading I have done.

This isn’t the first time I’ve “taken classes” while not actually in school. If you’re ever interested in taking a class on something that you didn’t want to take a grade on in undergrad, check out iTunes U and Academic Earth.

My first iPhone app will no doubt be very simple and probably not all that useful, but it’ll be an accomplishment.

Bensie 2009 Refresh

James — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:11:27 +0000

Bensie.com needed another refresh. I’m also planning on using it as less of a personal blog, and more of a technical blog. So it will be more about the things I learn and encounter rather than, well, the useless nothing that it’s been for the past two years. I hope to focus it on the projects I work on, the code I write, and my opinions about it all.

Slicehost From Here On Out

James — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:52:36 +0000

So I’ve decided to move away from the dedicated servers for web hosting. They cost too much, but mainly, it’s just too difficult to fix issues when they go down, especially if I own the hardware. Had a nasty evening in early August that cost David and I a perfectly good Friday evening.

While I’m not abandoning dedicated servers for everything, I’ve moved all my web hosting accounts over to Slicehost. Now I get to manage my own virtual servers (I’m obsessed with Xen and VMware) and I never have to worry about the hardware or the routing, I can upgrade it at any time in minutes, and I know I’m on a stable host with guaranteed resources that won’t be shared with other users. Data is safe, backups are automatic, pricing is reasonable, what more do you need?

So far I have a 512MB slice for my development and a 1GB slice for hosting. All I can say so far is…amazing. Servers are getting so fast these days and bandwidth is getting so cheap that it’s just not worth it to host your own boxes knowing that you won’t have to deal with the issues at the datacenter.

Server Uptime

James — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:27:52 +0000

09:24:56 up 292 days, 20:09, 2 users, load average: 1.28, 1.27, 0.91

Not bad for server uptime…unfortunately I need to reboot…

Meetings

James — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:06:33 +0000

I’ve decided that there is one thing in the workplace that I really can’t stand. Meetings. I’m a big fan of the saying “None of us is as dumb as all of us”. I can’t even count the number of hours of productivity lost at this place because of meetings, and there have been several occasions where I truly leave one feeling dumber. A typical meeting goes something like this:

-We all sit around and talk for awhile about the topic at hand.

-Someone goes on a long tangent about something totally irrelevant, we get off topic, and lose roughly 30 minutes.

-Everyone who feels they have something to contribute (or who like the sound of their own voice) gives their opinion.

-The person running the meeting fiddles with their Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint to illustrate their fundamentally flawed logic.

-Nothing is ever unanimous in the group, so basically we’re back to square one, with a fun little addition — bitterness between people.

-We’ll use the totally abused “Moving forward…” statement to act like something is actually going to change.

-We return to our desks with no official decision made.

A bit jaded? Maybe…

Best Movies of 2007

James — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:43:48 +0000

Here’s my list of the most awesome movies of 2007, in no particular order. If you haven’t seen them, you should.

300
The Bourne Ultimatum
Breach
Disturbia
I Am Legend
Juno
Shooter

Useful Query

James — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:59:48 +0000

For the last three hours, I’ve been trying to write a MySQL database query that would search for upcoming employee birthdays. You’d think this is simple enough, but no. Here’s the final query:

Good Stuff.

It’s been awhile…

James — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 19:19:51 +0000

Ridiculous, I haven’t actually posted anything substantial in over 7 months. Man, Bensie is dying a slow death.

I think it’s time for an update, what about you? The biggest and best news? I’m married now to Mrs. Allison Whitney Miller. Allison and I are having an absolute blast as young marrieds. We went to Maui, Hawaii for our honeymoon, and it was undoubtedly the best vacation ever. Pictures are here (and censored, of course) if you are interested.

Now we’re getting into “real life” working our day to day jobs and going to bed early. I am still working part-time at 1st Pacific Bank, while also trying to get a business or two off the ground. Allison is working for her dad at his law office, and is back to school for her teaching credentials. She is tackling a 7-month intensive credential program that will allow her to get a teaching job in the fall. She’s doing her student teaching now while also going to class in the afternoon/evening. It’s a crazy schedule.

My video production/editing business is going pretty well, I’ve been getting gigs here and there, going crazy with the Cholestech National Sales Meeting videos right now and getting a few other small jobs every month. And by all means, if you know any companies/individuals that need some small productions, send ‘em my way!

Still trying to come up with a concept for a web application to write that will eventually take over the world (life-time goal). A few ideas here and there, but it has a few conditions: 1) It must be as fast, successful, and useful as Facebook and 2) I need to be able to retire off it. Ok, so I’m unrealistic, but hey, I can dream.

I should really write more often.