(M)iPad

I have to admit, for a while I've been a doubter. Maybe even a hater... But I think that's pushing it.
I just didn't get it. Why would anyone spend hundreds of dollars on... A ginormous iPod touch? I'm a bit of an Apple fangirl and have several devices, and we love us our iPods (nano, shuffle, or touch flavor) at the casa de Fiveforefun. But the iPad? Just seemed a little... Overboard.
And then came Christmas morning. And under the tree, nestled in a U of O hoodie, I found my very own iPad. I must have been a very good girl in 2010.
At first I thought, ok that's cool. I mean, neat. But how much am I really going to use it?
Turns out? A whole lot.
In under a week I have become inseparable from this gizmo. It does all the nifty stuff my touch does... But better. Reading books is a snap. Netflix and Hulu are that much better. The kids and I have enjoyed playing Scrabble, Picteureka, and other games together. My photos look gorgeous on the oversize screen.
And don't even get me started about Paprika, the recipe app that is worthy of a blog post all of it's own.

Embed - Know It, Love It, Live It

If you don't use ExpressionEngine, this post will probably be mostly Greek to you. If you do use ExpressionEngine... cool! Hope you find this information useful. :-)

MAX

I am down in San Francisco for the Adobe MAX conference this week. The trip down here was very uneventful - just the way I like it. I arrived yesterday morning and have already seen a few old friends and met some cool new people. The folks who can't make it? I'm sorry... and I miss ya already.

Looking forward to a week of learning, networking, and lots of fun. And general "getting my geek on". I'll post some photos and stories from around the conference soon.

RHPB and the kids are holding down the fort at home. Divot is in charge. :)

Camcorder

A few years ago I purchased a little digital camcorder from someone over eBay. I did a little research, and the unit I selected was "good enough" and was something that I could afford at the time. I really wanted to see how often we used a camcorder before dumping a lot of money into one. Turned out this was a good move, since I rarely use it. Turns out I am not a moviemaker. There are a few recordings of the kids' school concerts, which we did burn off to DVD's. But really, who wants to watch those things if they don't have to? Yeah, me neither...

Stinky's birthday is coming up, and one of the things he requested was a camcorder. When I told him we already had one, he was surprised! (That should tell you how often we use it, since he totally forgot about it.) I asked him why he wanted one, and it turns out he likes the LEGO stop motion movies on YouTube and thought it would be fun to make one of his own. He has done some movie-making before - both at school and at SEP.

Coldfusion

Coldfusion is a web server technology from Adobe (via Macromedia, via Allaire). I have developed web applications using Coldfusion for about ten years. I know absolutely nothing about cold fusion (note the very important space), the scientific field.

New servers are a good thing. It's like a blank canvas for an artist, and very exciting to geeks. They can also be very frustrating - much like I imagine the artistic process to be.

Especially when the server runs a flavor of Linux.

I've had a server like this for a while now, and it was finally time to do something with it. In case you don't know, Linux doesn't really come with instructions. You have to find them yourself, on the web.

C(o)urses

When you asked your kid what they wanted to do on their summer vacation, what did they say? Mine (well, one of them) said, "More school, please!!"

Stinky is away at Evil Genius School this week... thanks to some extremely generous local folks. We got a little sneak peek at what college tuition is like in the 54F household, and without a nice scholarship from the University, support from the community, and a good painting gig this great experience would not have been possible. So from both of us... Thank You!!!

So Stinky is living in a dorm room for the next two weeks. We knew he would be sharing with another evil genius. Turns out his roomie traveled here all the way from South Korea! How cool is that? I wonder if he will teach Stinky to say "My mom is the greatest" in Korean? Heh... right.

Tonight

It's Wednesday night, a "school night". You want to hang out with some cool people but you aren't sure where to go. Why not head down to the...

Central Oregon Blogger Meet-up
Wednesday, April 30, 5:30ish at the Summit, Downtown Bend
To RSVP visit this event's page on Upcoming and click "I'm Going!", leave a comment, or email me at jenblackledge at gmail.com

The first blogger meetup was a big success! Since then there's been a lot of growth and new folks have popped up in our local "blogosphere". Meetups like this are a nice chance for all of us to gather, unwind, and put some faces together with the blogs.

This event is primarily intended for bloggers who wish to meet other bloggers. If you don't have a blog, then this may not be the get-together for you. So, if you just can't stand not being there and don't already have a blog... what are you waiting for?!

Elise

This post is for Elise... I hope the rest of you enjoy these photos too!


A different kind of Red Hat?

Monday

A good day, for a Monday. But then I am at Macworld so how can it not be good? ;)

I have posted photos on Flickr. Nothing too exciting yet, just some swag and my roomie (who also happens to be my sis). Things should get more exciting tomorrow. I am excited to see what "The Steve" says is "in the air".

Ta!

Gone...

I am heading to San Francisco for a week. Unfortunately Scott and the kids are staying behind to hold down the fort. I don't know if I will be blogging, but if you are curious to see what I am up to at the Macworld Expo please follow my tweets on Twitter. Especially on Tuesday morning, when I will be trying to keep all y'all up to speed on the keynote!

Desktop

So far I have been pretty happy with my MBP. Yes, the fan is loud and sometimes it sounds like we are going to warp speed but other than that I have no major beefs.

And so far I have been very happy with my MBP, post-Leopard upgrade. A few things are different, yes. But nothing earth-shattering.

But one thing has been getting on my nerves. It's little. It's piddly. But it's really annoying. Other than the "Macintosh HD" no other discs were appearing on my desktop. Network drives. Removeable drives. CD's. Nope, nada, zilch. Yes, they appear in the Finder sidebar, but that's a pain.

Leopard

Can you guess what I'm doing today?

Warning

Here's another reason why you shouldn't surf for free on your neighbor's Internet connection:



But wait! There's more... check out part two!

Preso

Tonight I will be talking about Ribbit for the PDXRIA group over in Portland. If you are in the area stop by and say hi!

This is my first "official" presentation for another group so I am a little nervous. Hopefully it will go OK!

The weather forecast is mostly wind, wind, and more wind. Fortunately it looks like the snow level is rising (to about 8000 feet) so I am hoping to avoid driving home in snow and ice!

Ribbit - Simplicity!

I am working on incorporating some of the Ribbit functionality into a Flex application built for work. At the most basic level - it's a contact management solution sort of like GoldMine, but with a lot of custom reporting and organizational "goodies".

I loveloveLOVE how simple it has been to add the Ribbit functions to this app. In a matter of hours, I was able to update the application to enable the user to click on any contact and place a call from their computer, without re-dialing.

It was similarly easy to log the user into the Ribbit system in the background - which means the app still loads and they can work while Ribbit does it's thing. (To be fair, we have a pretty slow connection to the Internet here in the office - so I think it's an "us" thing and not a Ribbit issue!) Once the session is connected I have it setup to simply change the status and enable all the form items. Basically... like this:






This weekend I will try to make a screencast demo of the functions I have integrated so far so you can see how it works. Stay tuned!

Ribbit - Getting started

I've had some time to play with Ribbit, and it's pretty cool. I used the sample apps provided to place and receive a couple of test calls, and also play with the messaging features.

I like that every time someone leaves me a voicemail message, Ribbit sends me an email with the caller ID, length of the message, and a text transcription of the message.
If the caller is someone in my Ribbit contacts list, it provides me with lots of other information including a picture or "avatar" of the caller, depending on what I have set up.

And that's just the beginning. There's a wealth of other information that I can access in the Ribbit database... I am just looking at the tip of the iceberg still!

Want to help me out? Leave me a comment and I will send you my Ribbit phone number so you can give me a call! ;)

Ribbit

I am so excited that I have been accepted as a prerelease developer for the new Ribbit component for Flex!

In a nutshell:

The Ribbit Phone Component will give Rich internet application developers the ability to make and receive calls, record/send and receive voicemail, as well as add and manage contacts.

Lots of good ideas are percolating on potential applications for this component. I am going to start by tying in some of the Ribbit functionality with our internal (and proprietary) contact management application. Which (of course) was built using Flex!

Interview

Julie Anderson interviewed me for the WoTech blog the other day... you can read it here if you are interested!

Flashback

Via Lucky...



I'll be offline for a bit while I upgrade my MBP to MS-DOS 5.

COWPU

A little less than a year ago, the Sherpa and I started thinking.

I know, dangerous stuff. I promise it didn't last long.

But during that brief moment we mused that we were spending a LOT of time driving to Portland to attend PDXCFUG (now known as PDXRIA) group meetings. When I lived in Salem I attended CFUG (Coldfusion user group) meetings off and on. Now that I was back in web development, and for once full time, I enjoyed the meetings for both their informational and social/networking opportunities.

Now, during the summer it's nothing to leave around 3pm and enjoy a leisurely, often sunny drive from Bend to the big city. And to make it worth our while, we spent some time visiting our favorite Portland restaurants... which sometimes made for a very late night drive home.

But winter was on the way. And at times it's bad enough driving over the pass during the shortening daylight hours, let alone in the dead of night.

So we asked that question: "Why isn't there anything like that in Bend?"