Hi, my name is Al

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You don’t believe we’re on the eve of directions?

I love the smell of a conference in the morning. Not really, more of the pre-conference coffee. It’s taken me pretty much all day to get to a stage where I think I can have a 1 hour rush tomorrow and be completely packed and ready to go. I’m watching a live Dio DVD and I cant see myself thinking of anything else to pack tonight.

My schedule at the moment is arriving at 4:15pm at Sydney airport tomorrow afternoon. I won’t be going straight to the Kirk, but instead hanging out(probably in the bar) to see my awesome friend Spidey before she shoots back off to Melbourne. I’ll also probably catch Kay as she comes in a couple of hours later to split a cab. After a small port and civilised conversation about politics and scrimshaw, I will most likely have an early night.

Tuesday I have a workshop with Derek Featherstone. I can’t say I’ve met or even seen the guy before but when I mentioned to Perth people I was thinking of going to his show everyone practically insisted I signed on. I don’t think I heard anything other than praise that thats pretty damn impressive. From the occassional tweet or plurk I can see I’ll run into a few interstate web people there too.

Wednesday - Day off. I think I’ll go to the aquarium. No, really. I’m interested. However, anyone around with nothing to do, DM me via twitter and we’ll grab a coffee and or delicious beer.

Thursday and Friday will be the most packed out and awse days with the conference and meetups. I won’t go into everything specifically because, well, even though the program is out I haven’t decided on exactly what I will be seeing yet. There is just that much on that I think I’ll be making last minute decisions.

I actually leave late Sunday afternoon and haven’t planned anything at all. I haven’t really had a cruisy weekend for a while so I figure if I can do it in a different state, so be it. Perth peeps are flying out at random times so I havent bothered to plan much for the weekend other than wander around and take it easy. Luckily Perthites have a long weekend for…. something…. so plenty of recovery time after what will be a bitchin week.

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Drunken Ramblings

Okay, I’m kiiiiiinda sure this is the first time I’ve blogged when drunk. When I mean first time, I mean, I’m sure I have, I just cant remember at this exact point in time, and when I mean kinda, I mean quite. I’ve got a few things to look forward to at the moment, at about this time in 2 weeks I’ll hopefully be crashing in my hotel room at the Kirk after a kickass night in Sydney. That’s right, I’m off to Web Directions till Sunday at about 5:30pm. I went to Web Directions last year and had an amazing time, between the workshops, conference and Webjam, I quickly decided I had to go back this year. I’m also really looking forward to meeting a few people I’ve met via twitter since then. As much as it crashes and fails, I have met heaps of people I talk to a lot and will definitely make an effort to catch up with “IRL” at AussieTub after this year’s Webjam.

I’ve been to two Webjam’s now and both have been utterly inspiring nights. Seeing what some people do in their spare time is just nuts and the passion and creativity of the entrants is just awesome. Unfortunately, since I spend most of my spare time drinking or fighting, the last thing that co-operates in my time out is my brain. This year I’m looking forward to quite a few things, which I will avoid naming in case I miss something, and one year I’ll attempt to enter something myself. I don’t know what I could enter, but I am friends with some very driven and creative people so I might be able to scam something

Being a proud Carlton fan, I haven’t really had a lot to look forward to in September for a while, but conferences are probably the coolest thing I’ll do this year. And of course, September isn’t the end, there happens to be a freakin’ awse web conference in Perth in November. Kickass conference in my own stomping ground? Hell yeah.

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See Al strum. Strum Al, strum.

For whatever reason, a while ago, I decided I wanted to learn to play flamenco guitar. So far I haven’t exactly done well, but I decided to record a little clip now and then of my playing. I recorded a clip after playing for about 4 hours just to get a base that I can look back at from time to time, to remind myself that I might be improving. From here, I played every day for 4 weeks, and although I still wasn’t great, the improvement was there(kinda).

It’s now been another 2 months and unfortunately I couldn’t keep the ‘once a day’ practice, but I am still really enjoying any time I get to play. Coming from a hard rock/heavy metal guitar background it’s a huge change of pace and hard to get my head around. They are both aggressive styles of music but flamenco focuses a lot more on right hand strumming techniques rather than speed picking or solos. It’s also quite percussive in that the strength of the strum and tapping of the guitar body drastically changes the sound and feel of the chord or note.

Being the kind of person I am, I often get too distracted and do too much to spend time with lessons, so I have been learning online. This is a bit hard because obviously, I can’t tell if my technique is awful and I might be doing something weird, but making flamenco guitar ‘your own’ is a big part of playing. I could play things exactly as the music or instructor shows, but I’m not here for that, its more based on what you like, what you throw in and how you want to play it. Having said that, with such a limited skill set, my stuff isnt exactly unique, but there are a lot of my trademark bum notes everywhere. For anyone interested, my 2 ‘teachers’ so far are Sal Bonavita(whom I learnt a basic rumba pattern and got through the first steps) and Charles Sedlak(whose DVD I am learning off).

Having said that, here is the thing I’m working on now. Its Mr Sedlak’s take on the Malaguena:

Also, for anyone thinking, “That’s it, Al’s gone soft”, shaddap.

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Background Image on Table Rows Repeating

As per the conditions of my parole, I thought I’d write my quarterly Web-based blog post on something I found the other day. I was working on a tables(don’t cringe or vomit, they can be done properly and be used properly) and to make it look nice, there was a background image on the header. Working in Firefox for the majority of the time, I didn’t notice anything wrong with the table. The background image was on the table row so it would sit across the top of the table and I didn’t have a care in the world. I then loaded it up in IE7 and my eye started getting that twitch it gets when something isn’t rendering right, most developers will know what I’m talking about here.

The CSS I used was here:

table {
width:384px;border:1px solid #efefef;
}
th, td {
width:128px;
}
tr.headrow {
background:url(/images/southpark.gif) top left no-repeat;
}
tr.headrow th {
height:140px;
}
tr.light {
background-color:#eeeeee;
}
tr.dark {
background-color:#cdcdcd;
}

and the HTML for the table:

<tr class='headrow'><th>South</th><th>Park</th><th>Al</th></tr>
<tr class='light'><td>Light</td><td>Row</td><td>Here</td></tr>
<tr class='dark'><td>Dark</td><td>Row</td><td>Here</td></tr>


In IE7 it looks like this:

Pretty annoying eh? I thought so too. However, the fix is surprisingly simple.


table {
width:384px;border:1px solid #efefef;position:relative;
}
tr.headrow {
background:url(southpark.gif) top left no-repeat;position:relative;
}
tr.headrow th {
height:140px;background-image:none;
}


All I did was position the tr with background as relative, and remove the repeating image on the th. From what I gather, IE doesnt care about the TR and puts the background on the TH’s instead. I’m not entiiiirely sure how positioning the row relatively allows the background to be put on, but you just have to turn off the image on the TH’s afterwards it you won’t see the difference. I haven’t tested this in all browsers, so if anyone doesn’t see it working somewhere, feel free to let me know. Note, the extra position:relative on here is to sit it properly in my own blog, so it’s not really required.

Here is the coded table:

So there you go, may your designers go forth and round their corners. I swear one day I’ll be able to write a presentation on all the IE problems that can be solved by positioning things relatively.

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Say it isn’t Snow

I don’t know why, but everything seems to remind me of an episode of the Simpsons in some way:

Is it just me?

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Because I like weird things - 27 Day Trial

For a few months, a friend of mine from Kung Fu has been researching the benefits of Royal Jelly on earthlings. After looking around for a while she decided it was worth a try and tracked down a months supply. Unfortunately, 3 days into the trial, she decided the taste was a bit too much to handle and stopped taking it. A few days later I decided to grab the rest off her and give it a go myself.

I was quietly confident that I could get through the 27 days because I’ve only found 1 food that I haven’t been able to stomach in my life. This might not seem impressive, but I make it a rule to try anything once(obviously the condition is I have to know it won’t kill me). So far this has helped me in trying all sorts of weird things, some not reeeeeally fit for human consumption. However, I’m 3 days in and this has got to be some of the worst tasting stuff I have had.

However, I’m going to keep going through with this. I didn’t really know this stuff existed outside Futurama, but what harm could it do? Other than the rare chance of violent allergic reaction and possible fatality it will be interesting to see how I feel at the end. Until then, my ovaries have never felt stronger.

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Web Directions South 2008

Having just finalised my accommodation at a pub and Web Directions Workshop, I can sit back and tilt my chair. Last year I went to Web Directions in Sydney, as a guy whose skill set is somewhat limited I was stunned by the amount of awesome presentations and the passion of the attendees.

Without getting too sentimental I had an absolute blast last year and met a pile of great people who inspired me to push my own skills a bit. Even though I tended to fancy myself as a bit of a CSS smartypants, the entire industry opened up just talking to people. Whether it be after a few drinks at night, over a plate of food and a beer later on, or very, very quietly the next morning over a coffee, the discussions with people are awse.

This year I have a lot to look forward to again. Not only is the program piled full of stuff I really want to see(there isnt much code hotter than some nicely done CSS), a couple of hometown heroes are making the trek over to talk. My good mate, drinking buddy and current boss Kay Smoljak and another good mate and drinking buddy Myles Eftos will be doing Perth proud and no doubt giving some kickass presos.

This time I’ve also arranged my time over there to give me a bit more time to wander around aimlessly, drink coffee and raid all the sweet shops I remember from last time. Also, with my new found fish keeping hobby I want to check out that Aquarium.

So, anyone in Sydney, tell the pubs to dust off their pint glasses and join me for a kickass time!

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Little Al goes to Supanova

Everyone is probably well aware of my geekiness. I play a lot of video games, I have near encyclopaedic knowledge of various cartoons, I’ve been a tabletop gamer for who knows how long now(and still have 5 armies on the go) and I even played WoW for quite a while. I don’t really bother trying to hide it cos hell its what I love.

On Saturday, I went to the Supanova Convention in Perth, where I met Sean Schemmel, the voice of Goku from Dragonball Z. He is the one that does the dubbed version, the original is actually a female, but having been brought up on the dubbed versions, this is the guy I associate with the Super Saiyan. To be honest, I got a little star-struck, not a feeling I’ve ever really experienced in my life, but this was Goku. GOKU god dammit. I own every Dragonball, Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT dvd there is(okay not the movies), and I have a huge collection of toys. Like many of my friends I have trouble with collecting things. A few friends know and deliberately buy me 1 DVD in a series or 1 toy from a series so see if I bite. The DVDs have been as presents or my own purchases from when Gem got me the boxed set that was chronologically directly in the middle of the entire saga.

I tend to watch these DVDs start to finish once or twice a year just cos I think it’s that awesome. It has influenced my own training and got me into martial arts and I am a better man for it. One day I might take a pic of all of them and all the toys I have just to have a look, but I think it would be borderline sickening. Anyway, on Saturday I had one of the coolest moments of my life and one I will not forget too easily, he was hilarious and I actually had a conversation with him and he seemed to genuinely like talking to fans(or at least feigned it very well).

Now that it’s over, I can revert to my current age and continue as planned. Little Al is happy and now back in his mint condition box and original packaging.

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If Yan Can Cook…

Recently I’ve been flickr-ing a lot of foody pics. I used to get a lot of comments about how a ‘guy like me’ got into cooking, so I thought I’d do a bit of a post on it. For starters, I know a lot of guys like me that enjoy cooking and the web industry seems to have a few pretty passionate people that love it too. I’ve loved to make food since I was in year 4 of primary school and I was told ‘if you dont want to eat what we are having, then you can make your own dinner’. Although I couldn’t really cook a lot, Mum is a phenomenal cook and was happy to show me the ropes. I also recorded a tv show called Yan Can Cook every day and watched it. He does a lot of delicious asian cooking and I used to try to imitate him. Unfortunately, not realising how sharp his knives were, I would make an ass of myself trying to replicate his speed. He had a really cool way to crush garlic too, he would get the clove on the chopping board and slap it with the flat of his knife. Of course, having done it a lot of times he smashed it into nothing and chopped a bit and it was perfectly crushed garlic. The chopping board we have at home is uneven so I developed a similar-ish technique, and it lets me know my Iron Palm training is still working(normally I wouldn’t cut it this much after but I didnt want it to look stupid if I showed a big chunk I missed):

I guess there are better things I could have done with my spare time as a kid but I tend to have always had an excessive amount of interests(and still do). I still watch cooking shows and I have particular chefs that I like to watch. Luckily for me, I’m not alone here, I started taking the occassional food pic after being inspired by Vicki and her photos of what can only be described as food porn. The more recent photos have been for a flickr group created by Lachlan where people are sharing some awesome recipes and pics. I’ve got a hand-written recipe book of my own thats constantly being updated, scrawled on and gets food spilt on it, but it’s everything that I can cook that’s not in a published book.

I’ve also got a bit of a thing going with my mates where I will experiment on them using strange recipes I haven’t done before. So far there’s no complaints, but everyone’s too nice I reckon. As for my references to Iron Chef Burmese, I don’t think my skills are remotely good enough to call myself a chef, let alone an Iron one. I also don’t really set a theme ingredient either, I just pick 2 meals I think will compliment each other and seeing as I mostly cook asian food, they cross over anyway.

So there we go, the brief history of one of my many interests. Eat hearty, for tonight we dine…..

AT HOME!

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Cubescape - Pew Pew

Every now and then something makes me tilt my chair backwards and clap my hands in childish glee. Well, okay, it’s pretty damn often, but today I was shown (via Twitter) a Man in Blue experiment called Cubescape. Its an amazing experiment and the animation looks very cool. Not only is it an epic showing of code, it’s pretty fun.

Without taking too much time, I put this together:

Click to watch the animation, I screwed up the second guy so blew him up in frustration. Like I said, pretty fun

Why don’t you see what you can come up with?