Announcing my new blog, Razor Fast
Long ago I lost interest in The Dan Experiment. The reality is that most personal blogs are pretty boring to read unless you know the person and mine was no exception. I moved on to other projects. My newest project is a less personal blog, Razor Fast. Web performance has become a passion of mine and I want to share that passion with others. The site’s articles will range from beginner to expert with most falling somewhere in between. If you have a website, are a web developer, or are just interested in what I’m up to professionally check it out.
Hitachi 50V500 TV Goes Kaput
I thought this only happened to Sony's LCD TVs...
I’ve had my Hitachi 50V500 HDTV for about 6 years. A few months ago the red started to ghost. It got worse and worse so yesterday I finally found the service manual and fixed it in the service menu. Unfortunately the LCD is going too as shown by the yellow spider web in the picture. After some searching I found I was pretty lucky. The optical engine in these models is known to be faulty, often dying after 1.5-2 years of use. I have around 6080 hours on mine, including the original bulb, so I got my money’s worth.
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: manual, TV
Emulating XMLHttpRequest in node.js
I’ve been following the node.js project for a while. It’s a really cool, lightweight, event-based implementation of server side Javascript using V8. I hadn’t used it at all because it was missing a few key features, mainly binary support. I checked the project status a few days ago and lo and behold, binary support had been added. Now it was getting interesting! I decided to start a project to learn a bit about it. node-XMLHttpRequest (node-XHR): XMLHttpRequest emulation to allow reuse of browser based libraries.
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: Javascript, node.js, XMLHttpRequest
Using the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 in Windows 7 x64
In my quest to go paperless (a topic for another post) I purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 duplex sheet scanner. All the reviews I read before purchasing it were glowing, raving about how fast it is, how easy it is to use, etc. So I dropped $239.99 at Newegg and was excited when it came 3 days later. That excitement rapidly turned to frustration. Come to find out, the drivers don’t work very well in Windows 7 x64. As a matter of fact, you get the BSOD almost every time you try to scan something. What was I to do?
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: gtd, paperless, scanner, ScanSnap, windows 7
Massive Blog Updates and Tweaks
It seems like every third or fourth post in this blog is about updating the site, but here goes another one. This blog has been long-neglected and it’s time for that to change. Today I upgraded Wordpress, the plugins, and the theme to the most recent versions. While I was at it I changed some of the plugins I’m using to improve the site and add new features.
I made a lot of changes to the theme. While I like Grey Matter, I’ve always felt it lacked color. Upgrading to version 3 changed the RSS icon to orange, which was a start. I then added the striped background, a stylized Twitter feed, and a bar across the top with my social media information and links.
In: Web Development · Tagged with: blog, social media, twitter, updates
Jetblue Unlimited Travel for a Month – Should I Do It?
Update: I decided to not buy the All You Can Jet (AYCJ) ticket. Having a 9 to 5 job made it not feasible. It would have paid for itself if I did 3 day weekend trips for the month but the cost of hotels, food, and other transportation made it prohibitive. I have more practical uses for the money such as paying down debt. Have fun everyone who bought tickets!
If you haven’t heard, Jetblue is offering unlimited flights for $599 from 9/8 to 10/8. I’m already flying to NYC for a meeting on 9/10 so it wouldn’t cost that much more to get the pass.
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: airlines, flight, travel
Why I Switched Back To Windows From Linux
I’ve been using Windows as my primary operating system for over 20 years, since Windows 2.1x. I’ve used every major release since then plus some exotics like NT for DEC Alpha. But as I get older, more experienced, and more knowledgeable I get more frustrated with Windows. I’ve always loved the command prompt so when I was introduced to the *nix environment about 10 years ago I took to it quickly. I’ve used Linux in the server environment but had limited experience with it as a client OS. Fast forward to a little over a year ago. I began using a Mac at work, running the latest release of OS X. Setting aside the fanboys’ belief that it’s the greatest thing to ever grace a hard drive, I could see real merit in a *nix based client OS. After my experience with OS X and frustration with Vista’s bloat I decided to try Linux on my laptop.
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: linux, ubuntu, windows
Solving XUL Permission Denied Exceptions
Our company has a XUL-based CRM-ERP application that I maintain. Like most applications we run into bugs from time to time. We’ve had an ongoing battle with some very annoying permission denied exceptions. The exact error varies but it’s always in the form “Permission denied to [accessing|get|set property] XULElement.something”. Here are some examples:
- Permission denied accessing XULElement.parentNode
- Permission denied to get property XULElement.selectedIndex
In: Web Development · Tagged with: CRM, ERP, Javascript, XUL
Site Resurrection!
That’s right my friends, The Dan Experiment is back. While I haven’t posted anything in months and no new worthwhile content has been posted in at least a year I haven’t forgotten about my blog. I started working on a whole new installation of Wordpress a month ago. I found time here and there to install plugins, find a new theme, and copy over the old data. The updated blog is now live!
Major Changes Soon!
Nope, the site’s not dead, far from it. Major changes are underway, changes I started planning back in July on my last update. This includes a different theme, new logo, new ideas, and a series of articles. Some of the planning is complete as are some ideas for the first few articles. I don’t have much more to say at this time. Stay tuned…
