Warren Shea - World of Warren

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Starting tomorrow – I’m going to be busy

Friday, September 24th, 2010 at 1:33 am

Busier than I’ve been in 5 years. Busier than I was (or should have been) in university.
My life, despite staying at home a lot, was already busy. Developing warrenshea.com, playing games, watching shows, messing around with photography, and even occasionally going out and hanging with friends.

None of that is changing but I’m adding more responsibilities to myself/responsibilities have been given to me.
1. Side Project
2. Math 106
3. Epic Site Project
4. Learn ASP.NET 3.5/4, HTML5, CSS3
5. My job has changed

Granted, hopefully I’ll stop/slow development of warrenshea.com but the above 5, which are all-new starting tomorrow….are going to make my life even busier.
1. Side Project – I discussed this in a previous post. I’m going to start working on it tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. It’s web related and will be interesting. Sorry, can’t disclose any more information other than that.

2. Math 106 – Zena’s taking Math 106 as a side course this term. From my years in CS, it’s exactly like Math 136 (I believe) which is Linear Algebra. Math 135, 1A term, was Classical Algebra where I learned about mod and encryption. Math 136, 1B term, was linear algebra. I’m going to try to (re)learn the content of this course, along with Zena, so that I can help her as well as test myself. I’ve been complaining that I’ve been getting stupider as I get older. This is a chance to re-learn something that I learned 8-9 years ago, which was probably my intellectual prime. Just out of high school, eager to do well in Waterloo. And before my UWaterFail where I gave up on myself. It’s an experiment as well as a 4 month long test for myself. I’m excited to see how I compare to back then. Will I still not be able to figure out the stuff I couldn’t figure out a decade ago? Time will tell…I’ll keep you updated on my experiment findings as time goes on… :)

3. Epic Site Project – I’m decided to, against my nature, make a realistic timeline for this. I have been thinking about how to develop this the last few weeks. I’m getting more into what I want and the next logical step will be to begin some sort of development. I want to get this project off the ground…I’ve been procrastinating this for a year or longer at this point. I have to get serious or this won’t ever get done.

4. Learn ASP.NET 3.5/4, HTML5, CSS3 – I’m also going to try to dedicate some time to this. I have to start learning now/soon or I’ll be catching up on this when HTML6 and CSS4 and ASP.NET 5 come out.

5. My job has changed – though my title has not O_O (yet at least). Starting tomorrow, I officially change the role of my job. I’m going to work with my manager to remove some of the smaller, simpler tasks of mine and begin taking larger projects. This leads to more responsibility, more conceptual thinking, more research, more interacting with the business. Basically, it’s like the role of say, a senior developer…(though I’m not one….yet). I’m venturing into new professional territory so I don’t know how that will change my life. More hours? Late nights? More meetings? Tucking in dress shirt? >_< I don't know, but it's a big change. I often don't do what I don't like to do. I often avoid, take longer time, or delegate stuff I don't like. I don't think I have the option here. The good news is there's less to no grunt work, it's really....possibly a lot of the fun stuff. It's a good thing I quit WoW...like the last 9 months have been a preparation for this, the golden age of warren

/I bet I come home tomorrow and take a nap u_u

Posted in All Posts, My Life | No Comments »

Site updates and annoyances

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 at 6:18 pm

Site update:
My homepage, the blog aspect, and all my themes on warrenshea.com is now HTML valid! I learned you cannot, validly, put an anchor tag around a div tag….so i had to modify my megaman icons as well as my social media icons to have div around empty anchor. set the anchor to width 100% and height 100% and you’re golden.

Annoyances:
I almost always have my GMail open. My favorite and most used theme is my GMail theme (it’s so easy to read stuff on it!). The fav icon for my theme is done a little TOO well, I get my site and my gmail confused all the time! it’s certainly annoying to build something and, even though you built it, have it bother you…and not be able to change it (because it’s perfect the way it is!)

EDIT:
oh man, i completely forgot. there’s an addition to the gmail theme I wanted to do like, 2 weeks ago but forgot about it. i’ll do that asap, it should be quick. nothing special but kinda interesting.

Posted in All Posts, GMail, Site Updates, Web Development, worldofwarren.com | No Comments »

Chrome > Firefox? yes wai.

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 at 8:45 am

After using Firefox for 4+ years, I’ve finally decided after a month that Google Chrome is indeed better. By better, what do I mean?

It’s faster. Quite obvious, FireFox can be REALLY SLOW.
Occasionally FireFox decides to take 50% of your CPU resources for no reason. Maybe that’s just me but it happens at home and at work so I determine through flawless logic that it happens to all of you.
FireFox, once I’ve begun to notice, crashes frequently. Chrome has yet to crash on me during its use.

FireFox > Chrome for 3 reasons:

FireFox Web Developer addons are awesome. Does Chrome has equivalents? I don’t know but should probably find out.
~~Chrome doesn’t seem to refresh files upon “SHIFT REFRESH”. Not a big deal unless you frequently web design and develop. o wait.~~
Edit: It’s CTRL-F5
Chrome has no good FTP extension. My FireFox remains open all the time solely for that.

All 3 reasons are probably/possibly specific only to me.

I’ve tried the FireFox 4 beta. Same stuff. Chrome > FireFox4

I plead with you: Give Chrome a try. Use it for a month. You’ll love it.

If you remain stubborn in your ways, resistant to change, fail to evolve, you’ll fall behind in technology. Next thing you know, you’ll be like your parents.
“I don’t know how to use Windows”
“You can touch a screen now?”
“I just heard of this website, YouTube. You can watch stuff on it.”
And then you go -_-;
Except it’ll be your kids doing -_-; to you! How embarrassing. UNLESS YOU DOWNLOAD, INSTALL, AND USE CHROME!

/best. sales. pitch. evah.

Posted in All Posts, Browsers | 3 Comments »

Finding a good partner for a website…

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 at 6:39 pm

Note: This is an old draft but with a recent development, so I’m going to post my old draft and add to it.

There are several factors that I look for in a web partner:
1. He/she must be interested in developing in the same language as you.
2. He/she must be of relatively equal skill so that you both learn from each other. You may not be equal in terms of development skill but I believe your skills have to compliment your partner’s so that you both have relatively equal value in the relationship.
3. He/she must be have relatively equal passion regarding the topic the website being developed is for.
4. He/she must be have relatively equal motivation to work on the site, otherwise you have a person doing too much and a person doing too little.

What I believe is that, much like a give and take relationship, things must be fair. It does not mean that every task must be fairly or equally shared but as a whole, both people should compliment each others strengths and weaknesses.

Throughout my entire web career, since the middle/end of high school and still ongoing, I’ve been looking for that partner. Given the requirements above, I imagine it might be harder to find a good web partner than finding a significant other! Or maybe I’m not looking in the right places…

In high school, my friend and I wanted to work on a website together. He was sort of into web, much like me. We talked frequently about it but nothing ever happened. I stopped waiting and eventually did my own stuff.
In university and the same thing happened (with another friend). This time, the guy actually had his own web stuff, he migrated his content over to my already existing hosting…and then, never touched the stuff again O_O
Note that both of these are my good friends whom I’m still close with. The first one moved in to something unrelated to web, the second one is currently doing Microsoft SharePoint stuff.

I guess the first guy didn’t have 1, 2, and 4. The second guy didn’t have 3 and 4.

I gotta say, it’s tough. I’m still looking…there have been a few potential candidates recently but nothing seemed to work out. Maybe I didn’t sell that I was looking well enough…

Anyways, I’m posting this because the first guy, from high school, wants a website built. And as of today, I’m going to work with him on it. He’s not interested in the design or development, he will be the relationship between the business and I. I just found it kind of interesting that about a decade after we originally wanted to work together, we finally are. The stakes are higher this time though, it’s not just children playing, we’re both doing this professionally. But I’m honestly really looking forward to working with my friend professionally on something like this. It’s like doing a high school project together…and I know he’s lacking in 1 but he’s got 2, 3 and 4 and in this dynamic, that’s all I want/need. And because he’s a close friend, I’m eager to really do my best and not let him down and I’m sure is opposite is true.

So I officially have a side project now.

I hope things go smoothly…I might ask this guy for a ride but will asking him for requirements work out? He might ask to borrow a game but will his asking when something will be done sour the friendship? While I agree that mixing professional and unprofessional relationships is a bad idea, we’re both aware of our respective working skills (from high school) and I think we both have that working trust in each other. What really sucks is mixing professional and unprofessional relationships when the unprofessional aspect doesn’t measure up to the professional. Going out for drinks with someone and working with someone are always two completely different things.

/4 (LFM): Sheaman: LF1M WEB DESIGNER/DEVELOPER
/4 (LFM): Sheaman: Must develop in PHP/ASP.NET. Know XHTML/CSS2. jQuery/HTML5/CSS3 a plus. Good Group. U Fail = Boot. /roll for loot. Mainspec > Offspec

(that’s my World of Warcraft version of Looking For 1 More)

Posted in All Posts, Development, Friends, My Life, Work | No Comments »

Site Updates

Sunday, September 19th, 2010 at 6:47 pm

1. I developed a theme which is virtually inaccessible unless you have/use IE6 or IE7. No longer is there a warning regarding the use of IE6, no longer is there a weird PNG image of the title in IE6. Currently, the IE6 and IE7 users will only see the blogger theme, modified slightly for IE6 and IE7. They will no longer be able to view various themes as the “Choose your theme” div has been display: none’d. IE6 and IE7 issues solved. Finally. GTFO.

2. I modified the way the social media icons and Mega Man icons appear. The social media icons and the inner part of the Mega Man buttons are both 1 image now, with the image components beside each other. Basically, used the idea of sprites rather than individual images.

The social media change reduces http requests from 6 to 1.
The Mega Man theme reduces http requests from 14 to 3.

I also modified the hover aspect so that it’s no longer JavaScript and is purely CSS. These should improve load on all pages with significant improvement to the Mega Man theme. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of the images, I couldn’t/didn’t do anything with the Naruto theme.

3. I updated the About Me section. I wanted to add more images and stuff to make it interesting but that would involve digging up images from my storage unit, looking through pictures, scanning them, resizing…..blah blah i’m just too lazy for that. So the update is just more/modified content >_< 4. My themes (at this point, there are 4: Megaman, Blogger, Naruto, GMail) look pretty much identical on Safari 5.0.2 FireFox 3.6.10 Chrome 6.0 But the Naruto and GMail theme aren't 100% perfect in IE9. W.T.F. It’s always IE giving me the issues. I don’t even know how to CSS hack IE9….

5. Fixed the CSS in my GMail theme for comment section. It’s now properly margin’ed.

To Do:
1. I still plan/want to edit the Code Reference section. Of all my sections, that’s gotten the least love and possibly, long-term, is the most useful.

2. The hobbies section also needs updating.

/going to…read css or html5…or take a nap………or most likely, start to read html5 book and pass out after 15 minutes

Posted in All Posts, Site Updates, worldofwarren.com | No Comments »