About every 5 years or so I get an itch to build a computer. Well, with great after holiday flat screen sales, I decided to get a TV for the bedroom and to build a custom home theater pc (HTPC). Building computers has always been fun, even if it can get a little stressful.

In my opinion, building computers is the best way to learn about computers. As a web developer, I don’t have to worry about the hardware that goes into a computer. However, I have a  better idea of how servers work and how certain things can go wrong or cause problems.

This time around I went with the Antec NSK2480 case. It’s a little bigger than the average micro ATX case, but it was made to run cool and quite. A lot of detail and thought went into wire organization (great for my OCD tendancies) as well as padding between hard drives and the top panel to minimize any vibrations.

The rest of the hardware:

• Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 HDMI
• Intel Celeron E3200 Wolfdale
• Crucial RAM
• Scythe Mini Ninja

I also purchased a wireless logitech joystick and a Cideko Air Keyboard. So the only wires are to the tv and to the power.

It is now one month to the day since I last posted.

I really do want to post more often! Sigh… This month was just a busy one, and it didn’t get off to a great start.

I was in a car accident. Nothing major, no one was hurt. Just a fender bender where I caused the bending. I was merging onto the highway and after looking over my shoulder to make sure i had room to merge, when I turned back around everyone in front of me had started slamming on their brakes. I wasn’t able to swerve quickly enough and ended up catching the person in front of me.

I have never been in an accident before. The main thing I remember is the smell.

Shortly after this, my month did get better. Rachel & I took a short trip to Seattle. I had never been to the northwest, let a lone to Seattle. I love the combination of a metropolis nestled in such beautiful landscapes. Mountains in every direction and right on Puget Sound. We were there only three days but we were able to experience every kind of weather that Seattle can produce – one day was sunny, hot and beautiful. The next was cloudy with a 5 minute drizzle. The last day was off and on with thick storms.

We had one day where we could make a day trip out of the city. We decided try our luck with weather and go to Hurricane Ridge. If you are unfamiliar with Hurricane Ridge, it is in the Olympic National Park. It has an elevation of 5,200 feet amazing views of the mountains within the Park and to the north, a view of The Strait of Juan DeFuca, Victoria B.C. as well as the coastal mountains of mainland B.C.

Sadly, as we started our accent of the mountain the clouds rolled in, along with the wind, and sleet. What was a 65 degree day dropped below 40 as we climbed. When we got to the top we barely had 40 feet of visibility:

Both Rachel & I loved our time in Seattle and hope that we can make it out there again soon. I’d love to have more time to experience the city and areas near by (Mt. Baker, Bellingham, Anacortes, San Juan Islands…etc).

I wasn’t making websites when the bubble first started, so I don’t know what it was like. But it always had a wild west lore. It seemed like anything could happen. Everyone was excited about the possibilities of what could be done. This is what iPhone development seems like to me – or rather I should now say ’seemed’.

I’m sure that I am like every developer out there. Trying to come up with the one app that could make you thousands of dollars. However, Apples approval process seems to be getting more press than the apps that are actually getting approved. For the most recent example of Apple App Store ineptitude read about the Facebook app approval process at theAppleBlog.

What makes the internet great is that anyone can put anything up. No matter how stupid, silly or great it is. Everyone can do something. It’s how little side projects can turn into unexpected internet sensations. Apple’s current approval process stifles all this. And, honestly, as a developer doesn’t make me want to develop an iPhone app.

In June I finally made it to Europe. For our Honeymoon we went to Venice, Cinque Terre and Rome. I loved all three. However, I think I’d only go back to Rome and Cinque Terre. I liked Venice, but felt that the two nights I had there was the perfect amount. Whereas I could walk around Rome forever.

Then there is Cinque Terre. I haven’t been to a ton of places (almost every state in the continental US, but only Canada and Mexico after that), but it was by far the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. It’s 5 small towns on a rugged part of the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. We stayed in Riomaggiore through A Casa Terre.

I think Riomaggiore was our favorite town. It wasn’t the biggest or the smallest. So it had a good amount of restaurants and things to do.

Also, I’ve never been a huge nature guy. I like to take a shower at the end of the day and sleep in a nice bed. So Cinque Terre was perfect. You could go hiking all day, or sit with your feet in the water and then hike back to your town or just hop on a train that connects the 5 towns.

And the best part was to come back to our apartment, shower, and then get some food. The region is known for their pesto, white wine, olive oil and focaccia. I was in heaven.

Now were to go next?

View other Holga shots from the honeymoon.

View other Cinque Terre photos on my flickr.

I’m going to follow Jay’s lead and post a wish list house. Except in my case, it’s not a house on a cliff. In fact, it’s not a house. It’s the Madrid office of Selgas Cano Architects. I’d still very much love to live in something like this.

View many more photos of this office by Iwan Baan.

The Crisis of Credit was put together by Jonathan Jarvis. It is part of his thesis in the Media Design program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California.

It clocks in at 11 minutes, but it is as informative and easy to undestand as it is beautiful. I encourage everyone to watch it if they can.

Last week the world was introduced to the first official (non beta/alpha/development) version of Internet Explorer 8.

I currently work on an iMac at home and a Mac Book Pro at the office and despite the fact that I have Parallels and XP on each machine… I don’t really play on Windows that much. So while I have downloaded and tried ie8, I can not at this point in time offer an in depth review.

What I do want to do though is comment on the ‘Compatibility View‘. What this does is offer sites browsed with ie8 to be rendered as though it was an ie7 browser instead of ie8. If you take a quick look through google, it appears that the majority of bloggers are bashing this feature.

Well, I’m going to do something I never thought I’d do – post an entry in support of Microsoft.

I will admit upfront that I see where people are coming from with their complaints. The loudest one being that this feature will not push standards development forward. While I can see why they think this, I don’t agree with it.

In fact, I think it will do the opposite and push standards development forward. I really feel that this feature could be one of the keys to pushing standards development forward.

I’ve known too many businesses/individuals that are still running ie6 because they have some old web app that will only run in ie6. Even bringing in ie7 will cause it to break. This sucks. But it’s the reality of the world. Not everyone is going to be able to afford to go out and rework their app or site because a new browser was released. So instead of the business upgrading to the latest and greatest browser they stick with the old browser. It is this issue that is keeping ie6 alive. However, if ie7 had a compatibility view for ie6… I believe that we would no longer have to code for ie6. Because those companies/users could upgrade their machines to ie7 and know that their old web applications would still work. Thus allowing developers like me to take advantage of the possibilities that modern browsers offer.

And really, what is wrong with a little backwards compatibility? I don’t remember hearing this much outcry when each new version of Flash comes out. If I download Flash 10 it’s not as though every Flash 9 site will now break in my browser. No, in fact the Flash 10 player can even play swf’s created in Flash 4!

I’ve never been an iPhoto guy. And while I’m not a professional photographer I do take a lot of photos. And I remember trying iPhoto about 3-4 years ago and it was horrendously slow. I also didn’t like that fact that it didn’t clean up after itself. For instance, it would leavea thumbnails laying around even after I deleted the original photo.

So over the past couple years I’ve used iView (before it was purchased by Microsoft) and most recently Adobe Lightroom. They both did a decent job at organizing and allowing me to edit photos. However, the most recent version of iPhoto has made me want to give it another try. In particular the faces and places features. I’ve never been good at tagging my photos. Primarily because it was never done in a way that I liked. I’d always give incosistent tags to photos. I wanted something better, so I’d always end up putting it off.

So now comes faces and places. I decided to dive in 110%. I threw all my photos in and gave it some time to parse through and scan for faces. So far, I’m pretty impressed. It definately required some training, and it still misses some photos that I think it should grab.. but overall I really like it. It’s a nice feeling knowing that this method should only be the start. I look forward to the next version of iPhoto to see how they improve it!

This is more true than I’d like to admit..

Tuesday night was an historic night on many levels. In addition to the excitement around the actual election, it was also the night where CNN tried to pass off a bad green screen as a ‘hologram’. That night while searching online, it seemed to be all the rage. I was stunned by this. Was I the only one who was completely annoyed by it?

Thankfully, after a day or two, it seems I am not alone. Don Reisinger from CNet summed it up pretty well:

“First off, let me say that it wasn’t even real “hologram” technology, which annoys me from the start. Don’t say it’s a “hologram” technology unless it really is. If CNN was truly using a “hologram,” it would not have employed a green screen and overlay images. Instead, it would have captured scattered light and then reconstructed it back in the studio.”

and

“Nothing about the CNN “hologram” made sense. Part of the value of sending reporters to different areas to cover what’s going on is to allow viewers to look beyond the onscreen reporter, and see the raucous environment. And it also affords the reporter the opportunity to walk around and show viewers some of the visual highlights at the event.”

Read the entire article at http://news.cnet.com/stop-the-insanity-cnns-hologram-was-horrendous/