Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

I've had my headphones on for the better part of every day for the last couple of months, drawing strength and focus from my eclectic taste in music.

The other day on the drive into work (not with headphones on), Counting Crows managed to find it's way into heavy rotation on the Nano's shuffle.

And that is when it came blasting through the speakers of my beloved Corolla...

"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And its been a long December and theres reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last"

The particular part of the verse, is the 'Long December, and Maybe this year will be better than the last".

2007 was not a BAD year, not at all.

But 2008 is looking to be a better year. We are getting quite a bit done at work, rocking and rolling.

However, it was most definitely a LONG December. Because of deadlines and customer meetings, I had to stay down in Texas, while Gina enjoyed the cold, cold weather of Michigan. But December was definitely full of long days and nights.

January, is turning out to be about as busy. I had been hoping to take some time off towards the end of the month, but it is looking like mid February is the earliest I will be able to take any real time off.

I definitely want to get a short break from work before March.

Jaduka will be exhibiting at ETech, SXSW, and EComm, these shows are basically all back-to-back, starting on March 3rd and running through the 14th. I am not sure If I will be attending EComm, I would definitely like to as this is the replacement show that was organized in an amazingly short amount of time to replace ETel.

I really enjoyed ETel last year, too bad it got cancelled.

SXSW will be a good show, I really enjoyed attending it last year. And because of the fact that it is held here in Austin, it isn't quite like a regular tradeshow, seeing as I get to sleep in my own bed. Of course, that can sometimes be a bad thing, having to drive home tends to put a damper on an open bar at the various trade show parties.

We will also be exhibiting at the Web 2.0 Expo, in April.

I had the pleasure of attending the Web 2.0 Expo last year as an actual attendee vs an exhibitor. The difference may seem subtle, but for anyone who has ever worked a trade show booth before, you know the difference.

I found the conference sessions at the Web 2.0 Expo extremely informational and useful.

Well, it is late I wanted to get a quick blog post in before I took off from the office.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that I was still at the office.

(I ran home and let out the dogs around 5:30, but I need to get home and feed them.)

Laterz

Well, not like medieval times or anything, more like high school.

The Jaduka crew is pulling extra hours the last couple of weeks to help make sure we make our deadlines.

I have been getting into the office pretty consistently at 7:20 or so in the morning and not leaving until almost 7:00 at night. I have also, been working through lunch.

"So why does this feel like high school?", You might be wondering.

Well, as part of the drama group, when we were getting into the final stretches of putting together a show (be it the spring musical or the fall play), we would end up going from what one might consider light after hours working on the show into "Night Rehearsals".

This meant that immediately after school we would begin working on the show and I don't think we left until about 9pm or so. (The memory is a bit fuzzy on that part.)

Parents would bring in dinner for us during night rehearsals so that we wouldn't lose time going out and grabbing food.

The whole drama group came together to bring the show around, usually the sets were looking pretty much like the sets during night rehearsals, there would be some painting and construction left, but it wasn't a bare stage.

Anyway, lately I kind of feel like I am back there.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Eddie Gomez is a new member of the Jaduka team.

He got hired about two weeks ago.

His site is a little dark and brooding, in my opinion. But has some interesting features.

www.eddiegomez.net

I just wanted to link over to it and give some folks a chance to take a look at a new site.

I had him prepare a list of 8 sites he liked and 1 that he didn't.

I will be reviewing the list this weekend. I will do some excerpts from the list that I feel are worth sharing.

Laterz

An investigation into a new (to me) programming language, H2O, led me to the need for the ability to create a MD5 hash via a web service.

I did some searches on Google, but didn't find anything useful.

So, in chatting about it with Jeremy, he threw out "hashserver.com".

I said, "Why, not."

So now, I am pleased to announce the launch of HashServer (www.hashserver.com)

Honestly, the whole project didn't take long at all. It took longer for me to tweak it and get the code cleaned up and make sure I was printing back some nice error messages, than it did to actually write the "engine".

From everything I have had the chance to research about for H2O, it is an interesting scripting language that has a syntax that is somewhere between HTML and PHP or ASP.

H2O has the ability to POST and GET data from other websites. However, I didn't see any sort of SOAP support. There is the ability to open, use and close sockets. But I have no interest in trying to write a SOAP or XML layer for H2O. I personally would like to just use PHP.

But with the H2O language's support to GET data from another website, that means it is compatible with the Jaduka API.

However, to use the Jaduka API, one must calculate a MD5 Hash. I looked high and low inside of the H2O manual and found no MD5 functions anywhere. Now, I do not claim to be an H2O expert in any capacity. But several searches for various combinations of "md5", "encryption", "h2o" yielded nothing (usable).

That is what led me to seriously think about and ultimately purchase the www.hashserver.com url.

I will go back into the code later and add in a few other encryption functions, but md5 was the only thing I was really worried about.

And because of the fact that it is working as a simple web service, meaning that an H2O application can GET a MD5 hash of data that it submits.

I have no idea if anyone other than H2O users will find this beneficial. But hey, it was a fun little project to do.

But now, I must retire and get some sleep.

Laterz

I was afraid that I was going to miss my plane. I left the house a little later than I had originally wanted, in classic Ben fashion I spent about 5 minutes looking for my keys. Which in the end were sitting out in the open, just not in the usual spot.

Now, I am working on a mash-up to show off later tonight using the new Jaduka API. I probably will do a post about it over on the DevZone blog, but I figured while I am reading some online articles and catching up on what has been going on during the 4-5 hours I spent in transit I would do a quick post here.

News:

Gina and I now have DS Lite hand held game systems. Gina has a pink one and I have the Onyx one. Last month (January) when I was in Long Island with Jeremy, he and I had been looking for a couple of ONYX DS Lite systems with no luck. The stock at the local stores seems to be much better now that the x-mas rush has died down.

I bought a few (used) games. Buying used games is a new concept to me. Coming from the PC gaming world the selection of used games is pretty crappy, therefore I usually don't buy any. However, for the console and hand held systems the number of decent titles for sale is pretty decent.

I bought Gina the Nintendogs: Chihuahua and friends. This way she could take a dog with her when she heads out to the Philippines.

Anyway, I will post some pics of the new piece of technology that came in handy on the plane today.

Laterz.