posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

Lighting for bands and DJs has come a long way since the non-grounded 120V household switches with hot electricity running right below your fingertips. I’ve tested two lighting controllers and in the coming weeks and months I hope to post some reviews and primers on DMX lighting.

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

One of the best features that I’ve found so far (and I have many more yet to find) are promises.  When building Metro-style apps using JavaScript, the framework utilizes asynchronous requests through xhr.   Within that paradigm, there’s a promise object which essentially says that there will be data there sometime in the future (thus the async request).  The promise object has a method called then, which accepts three arguments, a success function, error function, [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

As amazon.com and several other independent sellers can tell you, I must be beginning another book because I placed a significant order for music to accompany the writing efforts.  In truth, I’m beginning two books, a new book and a revision to another.  This should be an adventurous few months. I’m about to place the first words into the first chapter and, as you might be able to tell, I’m attempting to delay by any [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

It’s always exciting to receive a box on my doorstep with the first copy of a book.  Rather than wait for the publisher to send the promotional copies I usually spring for a copy of the book from Amazon or B&N.  This time it’s the second edition of JavaScript Step by Step that arrived just yesterday. And today the first errata arrived for the second edition.  It appears that somewhere between the first pass and [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

      I received some notes from my agent over the past few weeks.  Two of my books, JavaScript Step by Step (Microsoft Press), and Beginning Perl Web Development (Apress) are selling well.  The JavaScript book has outsold any of my other books.  Some of the other books that I wrote and co-wrote were done under Work-for-Hire so we don’t get to see the same sales reports on those. The Perl book was is [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

Upgrading to IOS 5 on one of my ipod test devices.  Rather than restoring from backup I set it up as a new device.  On set up, I was asked to sign in with an existing apple account.  I did so but received an error to the effect of Operation Cannot Be Completed, com.apple.appleaccount error 0.  Still really haven’t found the root cause of the issue but the workaround was to go “Back” a step, [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

Has it really been that long since I wrote a post?  I’ve been busy migrating to a new server recently and one of the items on the ‘todo’ list was to update the blog software.  In doing so I discovered that I apparently haven’t written anything in the blog since 2008.  Makes me wonder why I have a blog anyway. By way of updates, I’ve been doing various writing and web projects lately.  On the [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

Observing from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA this evening I was unable to locate Comet Swan. The seeing was good early in the evening (7:30pm localtime) towards the west/northwest but became somewhat hazy by 10:00pm.

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

If you’re reading this, then it means that Google’s Chrome Browser is capable of posting into my blog. Actually, there’s no real surprise there, I’ve been using Google Chrome for a while and haven’t been able to get it to break yet. So far I like the look and feel, not to mention that it definitely feels quicker than Firefox, especially Firefox 3. Chrome just makes it feel like I’m using an application, rather than [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

Less than 60 seconds after I posted that initial blog posting about Google Chrome, hoping for a Firebug-like extension, I found the “Inspect Element” action on the right-click menu in Google Chrome. Oops. The Inspect Element option essentially *is* Firebug, built right into the browser! No need to download an extension, see the screenshot here. There are several other developer tools all found on the “Page” menu, shown here. Included are View Source, Debug JavaScript, [...Read more...]