Dan Mayer's Blog

I still get such a kick out of refactoring and shrinking down code. I try not to shrink it to the point that it is harder to read. I think some people get a little overzealous with refactoring and obscure so much of the code that it is no longer that readable, or everything is 20 levels deeper than it should be when you are in a debugger trying to trace a programs execution.

Anyways I was cleaning up a bunch of little TODOs or ugly sections of code that had been building up in some of our files. It felt good, and should make things even simpler moving forward.

Matt Mullenweg of wordpress fame, who is also famous for snapping pictures all over the world posted a picture of me... awesome.

Matt's picture of me

This blog post goes out to my mom. She is visiting with my brother, but still isn't getting enough of the sons. Apparently she has been making them frequently check my blog to see if I have updated. So here we are with a little update. I don't really have much on my mind so allow me to ramble little things below to fill the space. If anyone has thoughts or recommendations on what I should ramble about next send me your ideas...

Batman in IMax: The Dark Knight IMax experience
I really like this movie and it was incredibly well done, so was IMax even better? Yes, yes it was... but not by a ton, IMax is really big and I know the film is way more detailed or something, but honestly I can only absorb so much detail at any given moment and there is so much going on that I don't think I can really appreciate or care that much... that being said some of the flying over cityscape moments and such look pretty cool.

The Gyminee running challenge. For those that know me, I am not a fan of running. In fact I only think it is appropriate to run from something or toward some sort of ball (like soccer). So a running challenge isn't really my thing. Since they are one of the other companies this year, I am forcing myself to participate a bit. I ran two miles Friday evening. I didn't wait long enough after eating dinner, which made me want to throw up. Then my legs turned to jelly. Today 2 days later and I can still barely get up the stairs my legs are so sore. So I walked 2 miles today, don't really know why. So yippie for doing something that is supposedly good for me. I hate running a little more every time I do it... but I do feel like I should easily be able to run 2 miles.

Our apartment is really hot, I need to do laundry, but I won't because our place is way to hot. I sit in front of a fan in my boxers as I type this.

I gave in to being a tech nerd and bought myself an IPhone. I know as if I wasn't geeky enough. I now have my entire music collection in my pocket. I have also taken to listening to a learning spanish podcast most days while walking to work. Hola mi llamo es Dan! The phone also has GPS, which is awesome, I finally will be able to drive somewhere and not get lost (Dom that means I will call you slightly less for Gmaps directions). Factoid: I measured my running distance with my GPS.

Tomorrow we give our 60 day demos to a select few people. We are trying an entirely new angle to attempt to entice the non developer crowd a bit more.

I think I deserve some chocolate cookie dough ice cream, I might buy myself some as a reward after the demo tomorrow. (In reality after the IPhone I can't afford any reward, buying it was a pretty dumb financial decision.)

My girlfriend went swimming in her underwear in the ocean yesterday. I think that is pretty cool. I even saw a picture, good times, which I was there babe.

I talked on the phone with my girlfriend for 6 hours on Friday while enjoying a few glasses of wine, nothing quite a long distance date night... I am lame, but I had a good time.

I clearly haven't played enough video games lately, just thought I should share.

I really want to build tank wars for the IPhone, but I don't think it would help to productivity of our company.

I didn't proofread this post, and this post has exceeded my predictions for it, so I will end it abruptly.

I just thought it was time to through some software endorsements behind some software I have been using. I have gotten a bunch of people on Movable Type (MT) over the years, and run a bunch of my own MT blogs. I have been using WordPress.org for awhile now, and I just think it is simpler and better. It is easier to use, maintain, skin, add plugins, and about everything else. It has just been moving much faster than MT and seems to be built on a better code base than MT. So if you start another blog soon try it out, if you don't want to install it yourself you can always use WordPress.com to get a free stripped down WP blog.

I actually moved over slower than most to FireFox 3 (FF3), that was because while it has some awesome features it has some I don't like. Like it included all the bookmarks you have as possible results while you typed in the URL box. I hadn't finished completely moving my bookmarks to Del.icio.us yet, so I made my self move them all before I would switch to FF3. So now I have no local bookmarks on my machines, and I have all the FF3 goodness. I have heard reports that FF3's spell check kind of sucks and misses a lot of spelling errors. I wouldn't be able to tell you because if it misses a spelling error I would never know it was spelled wrong anyways. I do know that FF2's spell check always kind of sucked, it would catch misspellings but it couldn't recommend correct answers to me very often. I just ended up taking anything underlined by FF and searching that on Google to get the correct spelling recommendation.

So yeah if you haven't gotten FF3 go install it now, it is way faster.

As per my normal movie review, I won't actually say anything about the story or plot. I hate when people ruin story lines and movies for me, so I won't do the same. So what did I think? Was it worth the wait? Does the new Batman series still hold the best comic book series title? The answer to all of these questions is Yes!

So the new Batman movie was really awesome. It is shattering all sorts of records everywhere with good reason, it is a fantastic movie. Comic book or not, this is a fantastic gritty crime drama.

Did I like it better than the first Batman, unfortunately after thinking about it a bit... No. It was really good, but I didn't quite leave the theater with the same excitement and joy that I left Batman Begins with. Artistically, story line, dialog I think were all better in this movie, unfortunately it just wasn't quite as much fun. It was a little long so there were some drawn out parts that made the over all movie seem a bit slow. Still it was spectacular, and there wasn't really a cheesy moment in the movie, which for a comic movie is really impressive.

Go see this movie, it is great in the theater, we are soon going to see it in IMax since a decent amount of the scenes were actually all filmed in IMax format.

The Dark Knight

Kansas running for State Representative Internet Style

In honor of the awesome new Batman movie, pick up a new Batman graphic novel, here is a list of the best Batman Graphic Novels

Awesome dog, is Awsome

Are you aware of the secret adventures of a cat

Sweet, that feels much better... share some random things with the world today and put a smile on some people's faces... off to basketball

When you have a few hours driving in the car you think about all sorts of things... Today I was thinking nostalgic for part of the drive, which made me think I should post this.

Cheers to a random thought of the past, and a random memory of a past friend who I know nothing about anymore.

Tanya Brodsky once explained parts of the way she thinks, paints, and sees the world to me in high school. She was painting green into the skin on a face of a person, and I asked why should was adding green, when people never looked green, and she was going to paint over it with skin colors. She looked at me and asked, "you don't see the green in people's faces?" It was something like that, I am not sure exactly how it went since it was years ago, but my brain remembers that basic discussion. I looked for years and never saw all the other colors in peoples faces. One day in college, I saw them and now I hardly ever look in a mirror with out seeing the green, yellow, and other colors in my own face. I see them in everyone else's that I have long enough moments to look deeply into. Looking into a mirror this weekend, I thought about this old conversation yet again, and it might stand out as one of the most interesting and sticking conversations I had in high school. So thanks Tanya Brodsky, where ever you are, whatever you are doing, because I finally see the colors.

It is kind of crazy to think about the fact that a ton of the time we (Erin and I) get to see each other right now is at other people's weddings. Long distance sucks, we are over half way done with the long distance time we have to put in. So we only have about 9 months left, before we should be able to live together (again). We are both getting pretty excited about the possibility of the 'next stage' of our lives.

So who is going to be our 8th wedding?

Erin and I had a great time getting to hang out and see each other at Mark and Liz's wedding, and here is a awesome photo from the ceremony.

Today was bike to work day. We walk to work almost everyday, but to show our support we biked over to a meeting, and then to our office later. Luckily it wasn't bike to work and home day. After working in the office all day we forgot that we biked to work, and we walked home, hence leaving our forgotten about bikes at the office. Awesome!

Oh well good times, I just fixed one of the four major problems that came to my attention today, arggg... I am thinking we better rock it this weekend.