(Note: I started writing this post mid-December… so take that into account when reading. Enjoy!)

Well, we’re closing in on the end of yet another year. I’ve been really bad about making posts in this blog with Facebook and Twitter eating up more of my time. I’m working on a new design that integrates Facebook and Twitter feeds (and synchronization), as well as updates to the Prototype/Scriptaculous JavaScript libraries I use; we’ll see how it turns out. In any case… it’s been quite a busy and exciting year.

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Thanks for your patience while I got comments worked out. It came to my attention that the captcha I was using was… unreliable, so I’ve gone ahead and removed it, I’ll just deal with the spam that gets through akismet.

The new design is now functionally complete. I have some minor things to do (add login/wp meta links, style the menus, a few layout tweaks), but everything should be functioning as intended at this point. This design is a lot brighter than my previous design, and was completely CSS2 compliant until I decided to add rounded box corners in a few areas for you people who are smart enough to not be using IE.

That having been said, for the first time in a long time, I’m pleased with how the site looks in Internet Explorer, though I do need to qualify that by saying you must be using IE8; IE6 and IE7 do not position certain elements correctly. I’m planning to put a warning in, but I get the feeling most of the people who bother to read this are using Chrome, Safari, or Firefox anyway.

On the scripting front, I moved from Prototype/Scriptaculous to jQuery. It’s quite a different beast, but I think it’s more elegant than Prototype, and it’s a little less dated. jQuery is becoming THE Javascript library out there, so getting a little experience with it was good.

I would love to hear your feedback on the design, so please do leave a comment. If you have any tips on the CSS, I’d love to hear that as well. And definitely, if you see something not working correctly in IE8, Chrome, Firefox or Safari, let me know.

Now, I’m going to go enjoy the rest of my snow day.

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Faster than expected… AJAX comments are up and running. Thank the bosses for the snow day!

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Comments posting is now enabled and working correctly, after some serious overhaul on the comments code. Please let me know if you find any issues, especially with the reply functionality.

AJAX is coming soon, just decided to get the functionality in first, AJAX is solely cosmetic.

Yes, I know if a comment is short there can be some CSS issues with the avatar. That’ll be coming soon.

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Comments are now available in read-only form. Posting coming soon.

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As we ring in the new year, I’ve decided to go ahead and post what’s done with the new theme for CrazyMusician. Comments have not been implemented yet, and there’s still a few style and WordPress meta bits to finish up, but you’ll be able to see the posts, and I feel like this theme is a lot cleaner looking and less dark than the old theme while still maintaining some of the stylistic elements I thought were good from the previous design. Best part is… no reliance on non-ubiquitous fonts! Helvetica all the way!

You’ll notice on the right-hand sidebar I’ve integrated a feed of my most recent tweets. I hope to keep this blog more up to date, but when I need that quick 160-word update, you can see it here as well.

Enjoy!

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So, I swapped with a co-worker so I could have today off and take my car in for an oil change and checkup. The heater has not been working for awhile, so I wanted to get that fixed too; last winter was super-fun with the heater being unable to keep up with the freezing stuff on the windshield.

So, I get up and take the car in at 7:30. Finally at about 9:00, the technician comes out and lets me know how much it’s going to cost to fix the heat. Then he drops a bombshell on me–the rear gasket is leaking and I’ve been leaking oil all over the place. This effectively triples what I was planning on spending today. Maggie and I have been wanting to replace this car for awhile, so we discuss whether we want to do these repairs or just bite the bullet and replace it. The mechanic tells me that otherwise, the mechanical parts of the car are in really good condition, so we decide to do the repairs and hold onto the car for another couple of years. My 2-hour stint at the shop is now going to take six hours, and planned furniture purchases to help populate the living room are going up in smoke.

The shuttle from the shop has just left, so I decide to just walk home; it’s only a couple of miles. Just for the record, a couple of miles in a hilly place (Omaha) is much more taxing than a couple of miles in a flat place (Ames). Well, I get home… and realize I don’t have my house keys. For whatever unfathomable reason (probably my initial plan to just stay at the shop until the work is done), I left my whole keyring with the car instead of just my car key. Whoops.

Thankfully Maggie remembers the code for the garage door so I can at least get under shelter and not sit out on my front step looking like a flaming idiot. Maggie comes home, we get inside, and find that the cat has decided she needs to be sick for the first time since we brought her home. It seems she enjoyed a little too much of her favorite plant, and decided to redeposit the extra on the white carpet.

We head out to Wal-Mart to get some carpet cleaner and a couple of other things we needed. On the way back home the shop calls and tells me the car is done. She goes and drops me off at the shop, I pay the painfully large bill and start to head home. From the start I hear a little bit of a funny noise, but I chalk it up to the difference because of the repairs that were made and my flaky heater fan. I get about 2 blocks away from the dealership and my check engine light comes on. Knowing that they just removed and replaced my transmission and taking into account the noise, I start to feel a little uncomfortable. Then I look down and realize for the first time that my speedometer isn’t working.

I turn around and start heading back toward the shop. They take a look at the car and realize that the speed sensor was not reattached. However, the noise had nothing to do with this; apparently there is now a loose belt tensioner. The tensioner is on the opposite side of the engine from the transmission, which is apparently where all the work was done, but the fact that I wasn’t hearing the noise before I brought it into the shop and now I am tells me something else is going on. I argue with the shop manager for a little bit, and he tells me to bring the car back in on Monday and he’s going to discuss with the owner what we can do. I’m honestly not expecting this to be completely free, but any fraction is going to be expensive because this repair is going to involve raising the engine out of the car.

So now I have to hope that I can get Monday morning off to bring the car back in, and I have to go out for dinner tonight with people I don’t know, which I am most certainly not in the mood for.

*sigh*.

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2 9-inch pie crusts
1 large sweet onion, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
1 cup potatoes, chopped
2 boneless chicken breasts
3 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp butter
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried thyme
salt/pepper to taste
2 Tbsp flour
1c chicken stock
1c milk
1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 450°F
2. Place bottom crust into 9-inch glass pie pan. Bake at 450°F for 10 minutes; set aside
3. Melt 1 Tbsp of the butter with 1 Tbsp of the olive oil in a large skillet. Cook half of the celery, onions, and carrots until the onions are slightly translucent
4. Add the whole chicken breasts, along with 1/2 tsp of each herb, salt and pepper.
5. Saute until chicken breasts are cooked through, approximately 15 minutes
6. Place chicken breasts aside; discard vegetables.
7. Saute the remaining vegetables (including potatoes) in another 1Tbsp of oil and 1Tbsp of butter until just softened.
8. While vegetables are cooking, break chicken into bite-size chunks
9. In a clean pan, melt the remaining butter and oil. Add the flour; cook until light brown.
10. Slowly stir in milk and chicken stock. Add remaining herbs and heat until boiling
11. Add chicken and vegetables, cook until sauce is thickened
12. Add chicken mixture into cooked pie shell. Cover with second shell. Crimp the edges and cut holes in the top to vent.
13. Beat egg; brush on top crust to brown
14. Bake at 350°F for 20 minutes or until top crust is brown.

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I’m now on Twitter: isucompositeur.

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Well, development on StudioMan is progressing quite nicely. I’m much happier with how the UI and features of this incarnation are turning out, and while I’m sure I won’t be ready for a release any earlier than this summer, it’s definitely coming along.

That said… I’m getting a little tired of staring at the standard Apple application icon everytime I launch a debug build! I would like to give StudioMan its own unique icon. The problem is, I just don’t have the skill to do it myself.

Is there anybody out there who likes this sort of thing that would want to take this up? I’m not in a position to pay you at this point in time, but you would be given credit for the icon in the program, and I’d be more than willing to arrange for a payment if at any point StudioMan goes up for non-free distribution.

Here’s what I’m looking for: I need a 128×128 PNG file with a transparent background. What I would like for the icon is an image of a grand piano, shown from the perspective of somebody sitting at the keyboard. In place of music on the “music stand” (I’m not sure what that’s called on a piano…), there’s a page of what looks like a calendar view from iCal (a weekly view, with different colored event bubbles–if you don’t have iCal, the Google Calendar view looks pretty similar).

If you’re artistically inclined and this seems like your kind of challenge, contact me or leave a comment here, and thanks for your help giving StudioMan an identity!

//edit: apparently the size needs to be 512×512… Apple went and changed their guidelines at some point.

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