Listening to the trees.

Have you ever just sat and listened to the trees?

It is very hard to move with two broken legs.. so I am cooped up all day.
…but.. every once in a while so far that I am feeling up to it..

I lower myself onto the floor and out of the bed, which is a hard task in itself.
I then sit and pull myself across the floor with my working arm.. through the living room and outside to the patio.

It takes me about 10-15 minutes to get out there.. and it is only a couple normal steps away.. about 12 or 13 to be exact.

I lay on my back, on the patio and listen to the trees… I have done this a number of times already and every time gets better then the last. Just laying and reflecting on nothingness. Mind going empty, except the sound of the wind in the trees.

If you listen hard enough, it sounds like the ocean. That rhythmic beat of the waves against the shore.
I miss the pacific ocean.

Reflection, meditation. These are things I think of that are important in life now more then ever.

Somewhere along the line I forgot that. It was important at one time.
“Sometimes you need to stop and smell the roses..”

Why is food so bad in Florida (outside of the big cities)?

JEEBUS.

I could strangle someone for a fish taco. A burrito. A REAL cheeseburger. Give me some chowfun. I need radnah. Some chicken curry. OMG I need samosas and naan… vada and sombar..

HELP ME PLEASE

I need sushi, I need japanese curry rice. I need eel and octopus grilled. I need soba and noodles. I need anpan. I need a good pastry. I need croissant and tea. I need some tarts. I need boba. I need some taiwanese pork chops. I need a falafel and some ROAST CHICKEN (you know the middle eastern kind with the pickled beats on the side and some hummus holy shinkeys that is what I need.)

I NEED GOOD FOOD.

A really nice CS3 like Flexbuilder Icon

It really sucks that Adobe FlexBuilder2 uses the old Macromedia Style icons, I thought about making one but I figured someone already did.. lo and behold they sure did. Here is a really nice replacement created by Josh Buhler.

FlexBuilder CS3 Icons

:{D!

gethyped – Hype Machine spider

Download blogged music, automatically.

This is a simple little spider that I wrote in ruby to download free music automatically from hypemachine. Just set it to run once by cron every 15 to 30 minutes. I wrote it a while ago as a super quick hack.

It should still work.

Just unzip it on a server make sure you have the required gems (rss/2.0 and open-uri) edit the config with your email so you know if the directory runs out of space and then fire it up.

Stay frenchy.. and remember if you like it please buy it,

:{)

*I have not tested this on windows, but it works on linux, bsd and osx for sure.

Download gethyped free here

OpenSource Free Chat Client and Server for AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime)

With all the hype around Adobe AIR I decided to give it a try once again.

I already wrote two AIR applications for a client in Flex2. It is a pretty neat idea. Basically with the runtime you can build OS independent applications using HTML/AJAX, Flex, Flash or any combination of. Users just have to install the runtime. Once the have done this, they can interact with your application just as they would any other on their system. You can even support drag and drop or system calls.

So I decided to write a Chat client in AIR using only HTML and AJAX.

I figured as a proof of concept I would just crank it out. Worked pretty good. AIR even supports CSS3 so I can get that rounded corner action. It should have only taken me a couple of hrs to complete.. (but my arm is busted so I can only type with one hand.. ;) ). So it took me 2x the normal amount of time even though I am getting pretty fast at this one handed thing.

I am tired and grumpy.

Which is not a good thing to be when you are banging out code. I started the project in Dreamweaver then.. ugh.. after 30 minutes of screwing around with DW’s stupidity, I rm -rf’d the whole deal and started over again. This time I did it my regular way. I built the whole thing in Textmate (the greatest editor known to mankind..) and wrote it all by hand. In less then 10 minutes, I was already farther ahead typing with one hand then I was in 30 in DW.

After Hour 3

Things started to wear on me… the switching back to DW to edit and set the settings, DW telling me that I edited outside…. DW not seeing my files properly.. gah… all this dealing with DW just to get something simple done. I could compile the application by hand, but then that means that I have to build the XML for the build files by hand and as any sane… or happily insane.. software engineer knows… editing XML config files SUCKS.

So.. I finished

… no.. I did not actually finish the project.. I finished with it.. I am done.. DW sucks.. if I decide to build this again, I will do it in Flex Builder, or Dashcode since it will be much more rich. This code is ALPHA quality.. and is there for you to play with if you like. You can finish it up or use the pieces in something else. Download Chaz Chat Source and Project files for AIR here.

* DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any damages that you think this code caused.. including exploding your toaster, your poor doggie getting run over, sputnik falling on your roof or your mommy making you eat your lima beans.

Have fun with it.. I like lima beans.

:{)