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I'm sitting on the couch posting this from my iPhone. Amazing. One strange thing--I had to disabe TinyMCE to enter text info this field...wonder if Tiny has some dependency on a keyboard? Anyways, iPhone rocks!

From the Archives

Finally digitized some video from waaaay back, circa 1991 or so. Here's some footage from a trip to Punta San Carlos in Baja Mexico. This place was always a great place to road trip to and I hope to get back there some day. (Unfortunately this spot looks like it's been "colonized" and now includes a windsurfing shop and...a restaurant?)

Hiking

We went hiking this past weeken--Seb's first time climbing the hills behind the lake. He powered up and was full of excitement as we neared the top. He wanted me to carry him on the way down--oh my knees! Here's a shot that captures his enthusiasm:

Sebastian surveys the climb

Negative Space

Here's a cool picture of Sebastian emerging out of a pool of negative space. The kid's got a quick tongue; in other words, I missed the shot!

Negative space

Boulder Fire

What do you get when you mix 50 degree weather, 80MPH winds, a power transformer, dry grass, and no snow? FLASH FIRE.

Thought you might enjoy this picture of huge flames out Sebastian's window! One of Ellyn's friends that lives about 2 miles north of us was evacuated (mandatory).

If push comes to shove I'll be out front tonight wearing my denim/fleece with shotgun and water hose.
Details here:
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/jan/07/i-70-closed-over-vail-pass-a...

We're all good; if conditions change Im grabbing the Beemer, then wife/kid, then computer....(hmmm...dog?) in that order  ;)

fire outside

New Website

I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my site to Drupal6. It's been a while in coming, but all my favorite modules are now Druapl6 ready.

The redesigned site has a bunch of new features and can probably be considered over-the-top as far as jQuery goes. But so what: jQuery and Drupal are totally fun to play with! Most of the jQuery enhancements happen in the Photography section. One neat trick is to pass Views arguments to your javascript using the technique I found here.

Speaking of Views, passing arguments in Views2 is totally different than doing so in Views1. It took me a while to figure it all out but the new methods are way more powerful and flexible. Recently the guys maintaining the Image module added Views2 integration which allows you to create relationships between nodes and images you've uploaed. Nice work.

A web redesign story wouldn't be complete without a few comments about how brutal it is to develop sites for IE6 and IE7, so here's mine:
...just go ahead and DIE you worthless piles of steaming bile!

Bye for now.

BoulderSkatePark.com

Since moving to Boulder I've been hanging around the local skate park. I finally got up the guts to get my old board out of the closet and give it a go. I haven't skated since college, and only skated on half-pipes, and getting used to skating in a park was pretty crazy. I remember the first day I skated: it was a cold fall day and I was bundled up in my parka. I fakied back and forth in the small kiddie bowl to get the hang of it and took a few good bails. But i was hooked again!

I decided to try my hand at taking some pics at the park--there's lots of good skaters here--and quickly got amped to start taking pics of the locals I met every time I went to the park. Everyone I've met has been really cool and there's a good vibe at the park, a big difference from what I remember in college. Me and a buddy from work decided that we'd skate the early morning session on weekends, and I typically skate Saturday and Sunday around 7AM.

I was interested in finding other pics of skaters at this park on the net and was surprised to find that the boulderskatepark.com domain was available, so I quickly decided I'd register it and build a site to feature all the pictures I've been taking. I've still got lots of work to do but you can check it out at http://www.boulderskatepark.com. I plan to add comments, a blog, and perhaps a few other goodies. Most pressing: I need to get the site looking like something I'd be proud of!

Anyways, here's a picture of a local ripper at the Boulder Skate Park:

Ripping Style

LaCrosse WS2308 Weather Station

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WS2308For Christmas last year my wife bought me a LaCrosse 2308 weather station complete with wind and rain sensors. I mounted the remote temperature gauge outside and connected the station to my Mac Pro with a USB to serial adapter.

Over the course of the past few months I've tried various weather station software packages including WeatherTracker and LWC. Unfortunately development on WeatherTracker seems to have halted, and LWC didn't meet my needs. Both are cool packages though. While I was experimenting with WeatherTracker I helped the developer of GaugeSoftware get his package compatible with PHP4 and PHP5.

Instead of using a compiled software application to log my weather data I decided to build my own data logger. Unfortunately LaCrosse doesn't publish any information about their device, so writing a method to query data direct from the station was impossible (for me). After much research I stumbled upon a perl library (available via CPAN) that acts as an interface for the USB serial driver.

Eventually I wrote a little perl script to query the device and submit the data to the database. I also wrote a LaunchDaemon plist file that fires off the perl script every hour during the day. With data logging to a MySQL db running locally I then wrote a little web application to query and post the data. You can see current weather data here. I also plot the historical weather data using a PHP library called jpgraph.

For kicks, I modified a script available for PBX In A Flash that speaks the current weather conditions to anyone that calls. Hows that for geekery?

Next, I'm going to improve this application by adding a "real time" method that will query the device every 15 minutes and log this data to the database.

PBX In A Flash Scripts

I just finished a complete redesign of PBX In A Flash Scripts. The site was built with Drupal which has become my favorite web development platform. In total I've developed 5 commercial sites using Drupal. Most of these sites include a bunch of customizations I developed.

PBX In A Flash Scripts is a site where PBX In A Flash users can download customizations and updates for their favorite PBX system. PBX In A Flash is great because of the people behind it. Thanks to Ward, Tom, and Joe for releasing (free!) such a powerful and truly open platform!

Need A Project

It's wintertime in Boulder, Co and I've been stuck inside the house due to the cold. When people say that Boulder has 300 sunny days per year they omit the fact that a quarter to a third of those sunny days occur during the winter where temperatures vary between 5-35 degrees!

Today is a perfect example: I woke to a beautiful sunrise and the mountains near the house were bathed in a deep pink light. My walk to work was anything but pleasant though: a stiff cold wind cut through my clothing and gave me the shivers. It's the kind of cold that makes the muscles around your chin so stiff that you can't talk.

Anyways: I've been indoors a lot because of the cold and I'm getting desparate for something to do. I've been searching for new projects and here are some things I'm considering, have started, or otherwise plan to tackle:

  • Update and complete half-finished features on paulperreault.com;
  • Organize, rate, assign metadata to over seven thousand digital pictures;
  • Search for and learn about obscure features in various home electronics devices;
  • Ditch Trixbox and replace with PBX In A Flash;
  • Organize files in file cabinet;
  • Organize files on computer;
  • Gather 2007 tax documents;
  • Research and contemplate RC plane purchases;
  • Research and contemplate model rocket purchases;
  • Wander hallways;
  • Make sure all software is up to date;
  • Etc;

Anyone have any good ideas for me? HELP!

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