I’ve moved

The website has been moved to a new home at: http://www.davidnortonjr.com/

Please update your bookmarks and/or feed readers!

Also by Adam Shaw, Scrapemark: a Python webpage scraper. It looks intriguing, and Python seems like the sort of language you’d use it in.

Using Adam Shaw’s FullCalendar, a JavaScript calendar plugin for jQuery. It’s awesome.

Recently signed up for a cloud server account with Rackspace Cloud. So far, so good. http://www.rackspacecloud.com/

Getting our features, bugs, and tasks organized into an issue tracker to help keep us on track. This tracker has a bunch of default fields that we don’t use, and we can’t hide. Maybe we should move to something a bit more simple?

Home ownership is a lot of work but it sure is worth it. We will raise our kids here, and that gives us a lot of incentive to keep our yard looking nice, to treat the neighbors with respect, and to take care of the house itself.

What new situations have you been put in where you are a stakeholder? How has it caused you to think and act differently?

Skype

I know everybody reading this blog has heard of and probably used Skype. However I have to give it a shout-out because it is just so darn useful. Telecommuting full-time, I have found Skype to be an invaluable tool. My teammates and I are able to talk for free and even share a screen. The audio calls can be conferenced with multiple people for free, but unfortunately the screen sharing is only between two people (currently).

The call quality is excellent. It definitely beats cell phones. I haven’t used a landline in a few years but I think it easily matches the quality. Occasionally we have to use GoToMeeting for various reasons, but we still use Skype for the conference call because it sounds so much clearer.

The screen sharing is really helpful. Rather than trying to help someone work through a problem just by talking (or emailing), we are able to see each others’ screens and quickly get to the root of the issue.

Skype should be an app that every remote work team has on hand.

Comcast: not too interested in my business

Ordering high-speed internet from Comcast was no easy task.

1. They refuse to accept an order until the previous occupants of the home disconnect service. OK.
2. They force you to order online via a kludgy, Java applet-based “live chat” in which the customer service rep takes minutes to respond to each question, cannot write a coherent sentence, and disconnects after you’ve placed the chat in the background because the responses are taking so long.
3. They pretend to show you the post-promotional period price, but hide the fact (in the terms and conditions) that that price will actually vary depending on how many additional services you order.

After all this, I went with the local telco which offered fiber-optic internet and clearly stated the real prices in a table.

Nag A Ram

Can’t remember when the last time I nagged a ram was…

You have to love that they let their sense of humor show through on their products.

What to do if you upgraded to Google Chrome 5 and the Flash Debugger doesn’t work

I updated to the latest beta of Google Chrome, and suddenly my Flex Debugger stopped working. The progress bar read “Waiting for Adobe Flash Player to connect to debugger…”, and after a minute or so it timed out with the error:

Failed to connect; session timed out.

Ensure that:

1. You compiled your Flash application with debugging on.

2. You are running the debugger version of Flash Player.

I had the debugger version installed, but it turns out that Chrome now has an integrated version of Flash that is not the debugger version.

The fix is actually pretty simple. In Chrome, just type the following URL into your address bar,

chrome://plugins/

and click Disable under the Shockwave Flash plugin with the location that ends with “Flash Player Plugin for Chrome.plugin”. You will want to keep the other Flash plugin enabled because that is your debugger version.