several things

A friend pointed out that I haven't updated my blog in a while. Well Tim, this post is for you. :-)

A few things are going on right now. On Monday (28-Feb-2005) we will be releasing the latest version of our Web application, which will include multilingual support. Our development team is the first to internationalize a Web application at my current client site, so this release will carry with it a higher degree of corporate scrutiny. I am very happy with how the software design was implemented, and I'm very thankful for all the members of our team that worked so hard to make it happen. I am very much looking forward to seeing it go live on Monday.

In other news, I updated Ian's Web site with more pictures. He learns so fast now. It seems like he learns a new word nearly every day. He's obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine right now, so we watch the Thomas movie almost every night as Ian chirps "Thomas... Thomas... Choo Choo!"

On a sad (or rather, weird) note, Hunter S. Thompson died earlier this week. Kevin Simonson has a nice retrospective in the Omaha Weekly Reader about his experiences with the Good Doctor.

And finally, this weekend I am going to the Iowa High School State Wrestling Tournament finals with my dad. For those of you that have never experienced it, wrestling in Iowa is a BIG DEAL. It has been exactly 10 years since I wrestled at the state tournament. This year's tourney will be somewhat nostalgic for the wrestling faithful. The tournament will be moving from Veteran's Memorial Auditorium (a.k.a. "Vets") to the new Wells Fargo Arena starting next year. Many people, including me, will miss the atmosphere at Vets. Vets is like a big barn. Every year people flood the building, many unable to sit in the stands, so they just hover around the mats. The whole place is very loud and filled with intense emotion--everything from elation to agony (from both wrestlers and fans).

tools for writing java user interfaces

I am in the process of writing my prototype UI as part of my Masters thesis research. I'm making heavy use of Java Swing, Piccolo, and SwiXML. I've found that my knowledge of Java Swing has eroded significantly since I last worked on rich desktop clients at Northrop Grumman. Fortunately, this site has eased the re-learning curve. Thanks to cut-and-paste and the Jalopy Java source formatter, I've been able to write my event-handling code quite rapidly.

google maps escapes into the wild

Unless you've been living under a "virtual" rock for the last 48 hours, you've probably heard about the new Google Maps. Google's first foray into Web-based maps vastly improves upon the clunky full-page loading interactions found on Mapquest and Yahoo. The images are dynamically loaded into an IFRAME and the map data is sent across as XML and rendered using a combo of XML, JavaScript, and XSLT. I especially love the smooth free zooming as opposed to North/South/etc. buttons and zoom-to-point.

People are already deconstructing Google Maps. If you're interested in seeing how it all works, take a look at this blog post.

Update: It looks like you can append '&output=xml' to any of the Google Maps URLs to see the XML that's generated for that map request. Cool!

i am kip and i am a cage fighter

This is much cooler than the nerd quiz.


Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?

28 years and counting

While the rest of the United States anxiously waited for the groundhog to emerge from his hut, I celebrated my 28th birthday. This Feb 2nd was especially memorable with my wife Lisa taking me to see the musical Mamma Mia at the Lied Center in Lincoln, NE. Mamma Mia now holds a place as one of my favorite musicals. It is certainly one of the more entertaining musicals I've seen (helped in part by my infatuation with the music of ABBA) and while it doesn't have the sets and vocal showcases of Les Miz or Phantom of the Opera, it does set itself apart especially by the "ABBA rock concert" that concludes the musical. I highly recommend it!

My birthday was made even better by the very cool gifts I got including a large selection of books (courtesy of Lisa and my parents) covering everything from woodworking to Bible history to Pilates. My sisters got me Anchorman and a gift cert. "By the beard of Zeus..." (in my best Ron Burgundy voice).