Group Shots

Totally Awesome Photoset

• Improved code quality
• Improved error handling
• New settings inputs for Amazon secret and API keys
• New interface for display search results
• Better formatting of search form
• Support for Amazon’s new request signature requirements

I’m happy to get this out there and want to thank the individuals who stepped in when I was too busy to update it.  Thanks!

First, I was at the gym and this skinny little punk wearing plaid cargo shorts and basically being a little douchebag was lifting. I didn’t have a problem with that. However, he decided to place this bar in the middle of the free weights area, clean it up (kind of) and put it on his back and do quarter squats. He was “training” his friend to do the same. The weights were not clipped and moved all over the bar and put both him, his friend, and passer bys in danger. I threw him the clips after his set so he could clip up the weights and he looked at me and threw them back. Then, he just left the fucking bar in the middle of the dumbbell area and walked out, giving me the stink eye the entire time. I wanted to throttle him.

Second, a woman pulled up to Marshall’s and let a middle aged fat woman out of her huge Chevy Trailblazer, then parked 20 feet away and sat in the SUV with her engine on. I went to the bank, and when I came back, the chick was still sitting there in her gas guzzling SUV with the car on and engine running. I was in the bank 20 minutes. I seriously can’t believe that kind of bullshit.

So entitled punk and stupid fat, wasting chick were my triggers today. Did you have any?

• Should I split this into a separate function?
• What conditions should I check here and what is the best order?
• Are there any programming principles that I know of that apply here?

I was writing a WordPress plugin today and came across a piece of code that I feel exemplifies the decisions you have to make as a programmer and is simple enough to explain to a layman.

When writing conditionals there are two rules that I try to follow:

1. Always check the positive of the condition
2. Make the most common case come first

Generally these two principles coincide. However, today I came across a situation where they did not match up. The piece of code is as follows:

if (!is_wp_error($attachmentId)) {
    $attachmentIds[] = $attachmentId;
    add_post_meta($newPost, self::$_post_meta_Image, wp_get_attachment_url($attachmentId));
    $imageCounter++;
} else {
    wp_delete_attachment($attachmentId);
}

The most common case here is that the attachment saves appropriately and the $attachmentId variable is not of type WP_Error, so the first condition will evaluate true and go into that first block. However, given the API I’m working with, I have to check the negation of is_wp_error rather than check a positive value. So, I put the common case first but had to check a negative to do so.

I really thought about swapping this, but decided not to because I believe this is clear enough to not cause confusion. What do you think?

I had a great time at the event. It was awesome to meet other freelancers and see what they thought about the world of freelance. I met some people I may wish to collaborate with in the future and learned people’s different perspectives on a variety of things.

To be honest, I didn’t really learn anything that I didn’t know before. But that’s ok. I wasn’t really going into this thing as a way to learn new things. I went into it hoping to teach and to meet interesting people facing the same problems I was. A lot of the problems that freelancers face don’t have solid answers, as each person has to deal with things a different way depending on their particular situation.

All in all, Freelance Camp was a great success for me. Thanks for everyone who helped put it on, I had a blast and I hope to see it happen again next year.

#uknowusprung when that Nigga ain’t strap up and he say- ooh I’m bout to nut and u don’t push him off, sprung and basic

via @jessespeakdotcom

#uknowusprung when the back of every girl head look like hers…..ur ass be happy as shit when u finally find her

via @UchiManeLaFlare

#uknowusprung wen yo ass constantly callin MY phone as if i giv a fuk abt u n yo nigga…dnt do it

via @kyliecool25 (this one is special because it has almost no words spelled correctly. Wow!

#uknowusprung when an old jumpoff call to hookup and you say naw!

via @cirocobama3 (what the hell is a jumpoff?)

MySpacers, please go back to your glittery caverns and leave the purity that was Twitter in the state you found it. PLEASE?

Online Franchise

When Madden 10 comes out I want to start an online franchise with people who are serious about playing simulation style football. That means a realistic run/pass ratio, a realistic run off of the play clock before plays, and setting that make the game statistics realistic. The difficulty will most likely be All Madden with sliders set to make running hard but not impossible. I’ll play around with the settings before starting the franchise to find the most realistic ones.

Anyways, if you’re interested in playing as anyone other than the Chicago Bears on Xbox 360, let me know by leaving a comment. I’ll set up full rules after I figure out whether anyone is interested in actually playing with me.

Fantasy Football

If you love statistics and ridiculous stat watching, then you’re probably already a fantasy football fan. I’m looking for 8-10 people who want to play in a fun league where no one is a dick. If you’re a fun guy/gal who likes fantasy football, let me know by leaving a comment. The league would probably be hosted on ESPN Fantasy, but I’m open to other suggestions.

I have no room for anyone who kills defenseless animals for fun. People say that he has payed his debt to society by going to jail.. B.S. That does not change who he is. What he did is pure evil. Driving drunk and killing someone is a mistake. Getting into a public altercation is a Mistake. Getting caught with a boat load of prostitutes is poor judgment and a mistake. But what he did was Calculated, thought out, Evil. He actually set his property up to host dog fighting its not like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could never except someone like that.

Seriously? I would rather have someone kill 10,000 dogs then have a person kill 1 human. What the fuck is wrong with people?

• @AhmaadNYC #intheclub lame niggas be tryna cuff. Mannnnnnn, the ladies came to dance, not wife u lame ass niggas
• @tyfamousyo #intheclub is where people wear they best outfits , and the next day bee bummy [ where they do that at ]
• @GAGonmySWAG always strapped when Im in #intheclub, bitches gimmie daps, twiggas gimmie hugs.
• @K1ngStraG #intheclub bitches under arms b smelling mad moley HA.
• @UchiManeLaFlare When im #intheclub i always dap the one 80-year-old in there trynna get new numbers on his Apple iBeeper like shit…..WHATS GOOD SON!!

Seriously, what the fuck do these things even mean? Twitter is the new MySpace. Super awesome that we get disgusting background images, unintelligible half-English, and trashy bullshit now. w00+

Here’s what I’m eating:

That’s a lot of food, but I can do it. I’ll keep everyone updated on my progress.

Here’s the highlights, followed by a detailed parts list:

Highlights

• Intel Core i7 Processor
• 12 GB of Ram
• Sweet Video Card
• Dual 23.6″ Monitors
• Super Fast Hard Drive

Details

• Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
• CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W ATX12V V2.2 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply
• ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
• Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor
• 2 x Patriot Viper 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory
• EVGA 896-P3-1170-AR GeForce GTX 275 896MB 448-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
• Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Hard Drive
• 2 x ASUS VH242H Black 23.6″ 5ms HDMI Full 1080P Widescreen LCD Monitor
• Logitech G15 104 Normal Keys 29 Function Keys USB Wired Standard Gaming Keyboard
• Microsoft SideWinder X8 Black USB 2.4GHz Wireless 4000 dpi Gaming Mouse
• RAZER Carcharias 3.5mm Circumaural Professional Gaming Headset

Suffice it to say, I’m super duper excited.

Fitness

My workouts have been going really well lately. I just finished up a 4 week period of hard work and better nutrition. While I haven’t been eating super clean, I’m a relatively lean 230 pounds at 5′11″ and that’s nothing to be ashamed about. The amount of weight I lift has been consistently going up, also. I’m pretty happy when I’m doing deep squats with 365 for sets of 8. I’ve also been doing front squats with pretty heavy weights (255 pounds) for sets of 8.

These last 4 weeks I’ve been concentrating on getting my chest a little bit bigger and that has gone pretty well. I’ve gotten stronger so I’m hitting out 255 pounds for sets of 8 on flat barbell bench press. That’s nothing to sneeze at, I suppose. More importantly, my chest has increased in volume, which was my real goal.

I’m about to switch up my exercise regimen to concentrate on my biceps because I find that they’re lagging behind the rest of my body. Unlike most people, I don’t generally do a dedicated biceps workout because I’m not too concerned about those muscles as far as strength goes. Now, though, I need to get them bigger because they look out of place compared to the rest of my body. I’ll be hitting them twice a week for the next four weeks.

In addition, I’ll be going with a different rep scheme over the next four weeks. These past four weeks, I generally went four sets of eight repetitions. Now, I’ll be going with five sets of 5, 5, 10, 20, 20. It should be interesting, that’s for sure. I’m going to try to not back off on the weight but will mostly keep the same exercises. We’ll see what happens, though.

Business

I don’t even remember the last time I posted about business here, but things have been going great. My biggest client and I have a great working relationship and I’ve been working on some interesting projects lately. I still love doing what I’m doing and I love the new challenges that I face everyday.

I’m looking at buying a new computer for development. I’ll be building the computer myself and I’ve pretty much picked out all the components. I’ll make a post when I actually order all the parts about what exactly I went with. I’m buying the computer to speed up my development speed and efficiency. I find that my current development computer slows me down a little bit and I hope to be more productive with my new tool.

There is some exciting things that I’m not sure if I can talk about yet, but I will announce them soon if I can.

Personal

Angela and I continue to do great out in Seattle. We went out yesterday and walked around downtown Seattle and it was a blast. We also saw the new X-Men movie, and it was awesome. I am a huge comic book fan, so I might be a little biased, but I definitely recommend it.

Unfortunately, there are some things that aren’t so great right now. My mom has lung cancer, and we’re still not sure what kind of treatment she’ll be receiving. This is especially hard because my grandpa just went through a long struggle with cancer before he died. Also, my grandmother had the same type of cancer as my mom has before she died. It sucks, but things will hopefully be OK.

So that’s it for now. I’m doing well, making a lot of friends at the gym, a lot of connections online, and things couldn’t be better.

If you’re a total geek like me who spends half his day behind the command line, why don’t you go ahead and click that link up in the main nav that says Bashify Me!  You’ll soon see why the link is there and what happens.  Commands work as you expect with some limitations.  You can’t do “..” with cd as I didn’t want to deal with that headache.  You can’t make files or dirs (obviously) and the commands aren’t very liberal with their accepted input.  Play around, though, and I think you’ll like it (if you’re awesome).

I’ll be doing a full write up about the plugin, what it does, and how it does it, over on Plugin-Developer.com within a couple of days.

Now, they might have finally found their answer!  Jay Cutler was just traded to the Bears in return for Kyle Orton and a couple of draft picks.  With Devin Hester’s speed on the outside and Cutler’s near telepathic connection with his former teammate Earl Bennett, this can only be the greatest of things.

I can’t wait to see Cutler throwing the deep bombs to Hester, mid range to Bennett, and handing it to the beast of a back Matt Forte.  Yay!

• Clean and Minimalist
• Retro and Vintage
• Grunge
• Hand Drawing Style
• Modern and Elegant

I’m entering in the Clean and Minimalist category because I think I have a good shot at winning. I think my theme is minimalist enough to focus entirely on the content and pretty enough to not be an eyesore.

The HTML is clean and lean, and the CSS file is meager 4 kb. The site loads quickly and comments are pretty good looking. The best example is on my Amazon Reloaded for WordPress page.