The Drunken Epic - The Drunken Ramblings Of A Code Monkey

A handy little project ...

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:27:00 GMT

Just to, ironically, show how far behind I am of current web design trends and projects, I'd like to post about something cool I found today.

I've been working on a project for my new boss to implement a ribbon-styled (think Office 2007) navigation system for our intranet homepage. The problem was that a 2-columned layout ate up far too much real estate on our pages. The left column being used for second-level "drill-down" navigation and the right for displaying content. A ribbon-styled navigation system allows you to free up all that space so you have plenty of room for displaying all sorts of data.

Well, this particular ribbon is supposed to work identically to Office's implementation. This includes the fade-in hover effects on the highlighting bars. No problem with modern browsers. Just use some simple CSS and some quick jQuery action and you're good to go. Unfortunately, 95% of our users are all stuck on IE6. That means no native support for alpha-transparencies in PNGs, no hover effects on anything but anchor tags and no full support of CSS selectors.

The way the ribbon system was initially styled works perfectly in IE7, FF2 and 3, but fails miserably in IE6. After putting hours into finding a solution, I was about to call it quits and just create a separate stylesheet for IE6. Did a bit more searching before giving up and came across a mention on Veerle's Blog of an awesome JavaScript library that causes IE5 and 6 to mimic common behaviors of IE7.

Written by Dean Edwards, this simple library fixed about 99% of the issues I was having with cross browser compatibility. He currently hosts the project on Google Code and is quite easy to implement.

Just place the following in your HTML:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<script src="http://ie7-js.googlecode.com/svn/version/2.0(beta3)/IE7.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<![endif]-->

The only inconvenience for me was to rename all my transparent PNG images to include the suffix of '-trans' before the extension. So, for instance, awesome-wow.png has to be renamed to awesome-wow-trans.png for the alpha-transparency hack to work.

Aside from a slight image flicker when the page first loads, this thing works perfectly.

Yes, I am fully aware this thing has been out for close to a year now, but I've never had issues with IE6 that were serious enough to necessitate the need to search for such a robust solution.

Kudos, Dean!

Discussion board naming conventions ...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:57:00 GMT

Forums, categories, topics, threads, posts, replies, blah, blah, blah. Has anyone ever really given any thought as to whether or not we're using these terms properly? Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about forum software in general and this is probably one of the more nit-picky subjects of the lot. I just think we're naming our parts wrong.

First off, the definition of a 'forum', according to my good friend Webster, is:

1 a : the marketplace or public place of an ancient Roman city forming the center of judicial and public business b : a public meeting place for open discussion c : a medium (as a newspaper or online service) of open discussion or expression of ideas

Ok, so maybe Forum is a pretty good word for this type of software, but I've got an issue with the next word on the list; categories. Now it makes pretty good sense, since you're trying to categorize your topics, but how do we categorize real life discussions? Well, we usually call them TOPICS of DISCUSSION, don't we? Sports, technology, web development are all topics of discussion. We could still call them categories, but doesn't that sound boring?

Next, we have 'topics' as we see them today. Well, we can't call them topics since categories are called the same thing; kind of confusing. Why not call them discussions? If we follow the idea of the phrase 'topic of discussion', this term falls into place and makes perfect sense.

Last on my list is the boring use of the word 'posts'. You don't POST something when you're having a discussion, you comment on a discussion. So posts are really comments, which makes this whole thing sound a bit more 'human'.

Forums are used to bring people together, not robots, so it's only natural to use terms that are more 'human-oriented'. So, in closing, here's a quick rundown of what I'm trying to say:

Forums are Forums
Categories are Topics
Topics are Discussions
Posts are Comments

Again, "Bob visited a forum and commented on a discussion based on the topic of sports."

MUCH nicer. Discuss ...

P.S. - This was posted almost 2 years ago on the MyTopix support forums. Good for content here. ;)

People are dumb ...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:18:11 GMT

As some of you might know, I currently live and work in Australia. It's been a huge change for me since I left Chicago about 2 months ago, but some things stay the same no matter where you go. People, for instance, never change. They have been and always will be completely retarded and self-important.

Case in point, this morning I was on the bus going to work. It's a pretty boring ride that lasts between 45 minutes to an hour every morning, so I try to amuse myself by watching people in traffic. Well, about 2 blocks from my current gig was a small red car trying to merge with a cross lane at an intersection. There was a guy driving a very pricey BMW directly behind this car. He wanted to pass and was impatiently honking his horn. The moment the red car budged, he hit the accelerator to take him over. Well, he put a little too much pressure on the peddle and slammed right into rear of the little red car.

What happened next? Did the guy in the BMW stop, get out, see if anyone got hurt and then assess the damage? Of course not! That would make too much sense. so instead of doing the right thing, he did the typical thing and attempted to speed off. You can guess what happened next, right? In his attempt to avoid accepting responsibility for his douche-baggery, he tried to escape by speeding off into the merging lane and ran right into another car.

What would have been a simple fender-bender and call to his insurance agency, now became that as well wreckless driving and attempted hit-and-run.

People are dumb.

FlipSquare's payment system is active!

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:39:59 GMT

Well, it's about time. After a good long while of development and testing the team and I thought that now is a good a time as any to start charging for listings at FlipSquare.com. Even though all amounts of user credit are now reset to zero, people who signed up during the beta phase of the project will be getting $75 worth of credit for free.

Now, it's time to seriously market and finesse this thing!

For those of you who don't know what FlipSquare is, I wrote an article about it a few months back that explains it quite well.

I know I've been absent for the past few months, but I have some pretty big announcements coming up within the next few days!

Stay tuned!

Friday Feast #10

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:13:00 GMT

It's that special day of the week again ...

Appetizer

Q. When you drink soda/pop/coke, do you prefer to drink it from the bottle, a can, or after pouring it into a cup?
A. I don't like soda/pop/coke, but if I happen to drink it, it'll be in a cup... as a mixer.

Soup

Q. What television show are you willing to stay up late to watch?
A. Battlestar Galactica

Salad

Q. Name one person, place, or thing you think of as brilliant.
A. Me. I'm brilliant.

Main Course

Q. Would you be willing to work 4 10-hour days instead of 5 8-hour days in order to save gas?
A. I'd rather not work at all. Score one for me and the environment.

Dessert

Q. If you were a superhero, what would you call yourself?
A. The Man From Nantucket

Spam is cool only in Hawaii

Thu, 22 May 2008 14:49:38 GMT

Thanks to Akismet being a general dick and not working, I'm going to be considering a different commenting solution when the time comes to update this blog. I'm getting about 200+ spam postings a day now and I have to waste 10 or so minutes of my precious, precious time cleaning it all up. These are minutes I will never get back, people.

I've been considering quite a few methods to prevent this from happening, but I will probably decide to go with a comment service provider like Disqus. Haven't really read into how I would implement something like this into the blog, but judging by how many people use it, I shouldn't have any troubles.

This move should stop the spam dead in it's tracks. This is important because I have a lot of content planned for this site in the next few weeks, yo!

The $100 House & Essay Contest!

Mon, 12 May 2008 22:36:00 GMT

This is for a long-time buddy and colleague of mine who just recently got a kick ass job in Nashville, Tennessee. He currently lives in Idaho and has to move his entire family down to his new location. The guy has a house he's trying to sell before he heads out, but with the current housing market, he's having a very difficult time doing so. This somewhat dire situation has left him with little options to choose from. Thankfully, he's somewhat creative and came up with an ingenious idea!

"The $100 House & Essay Contest" is an event where if you send him $100 and a well-worded essay, you have a chance to win his house. The only real catch is before he picks a winner, he needs 2,500 submissions to cover the cost of his house. Once he receives the required amount of entries, he'll pick a winning essay and, in turn, a winner.

I think it's a very creative solution to a problem that's all too common in today's real estate market. Hats off to my buddy, James of onelotus creative fame, for being such a nutty genius!

You can read more about the contest here and Digg the entry here!

Good luck, Jim!

Project FlipSquare Open For Beta Testing!!!

Sat, 10 May 2008 17:48:00 GMT

Well, it's been close to a year later and it looks like we've finally launched one of our secret projects. I don't usually share project details with clients and partners until said projects are pretty much completed. So, since this is now the case, let's learn a bit more about this new site!

What is FlipSquare?

FlipSquare is an auctioning site dedicated to providing a service that allows people to buy and sell websites and domain names. This is something that will cater to the growing market of site flipping.

What is Site Flipping?

Ever heard of house flipping? Sure you have! Almost every channel on cable television has some sort of show dedicated to the concept. You take a crappy, rundown property and buy it for real cheap. You invest a little bit of time and love into building up the property's value and then you sell it off to the highest bidder to turn a nice profit.

Site flipping is pretty much the exact same thing. Well, in concept at least. The website attached to the domain could be considered the house while the domain itself is the property your house sits on; internet real estate, if you will. The value of a domain name is determined by many, many different variables. Some of which include how much ad revenue it brings in per month, unique visitors, page views, how well it ranks among search engines, Alexa rankings, what kind of and how much content it might serve.

All these things, over time, increase the value of your domain name and / or website. Some people actually do this for a living where they just buy hundreds of low-ranking domain names, 'flip' them into something valuable and then sell them to turn in a nice profit.

Aren't There Sites That Already Do This?

Sure there are, but none of them really do it right. Some auctioning sites that cater to this market are just heavily-modified discussion boards. Other sites, like Site Point, offer a dedicated marketplace, but the implementation seems more like an afterthought when compared to the rest of the site.

FlipSquare is a website that is not only 100% dedicated to this market, but offers a huge range of neat features that make the process not only more convenient, but a bit more fun and intuitive.

So, What Do You Need Us For?

Since this is a relatively new site... Ok, VERY new site. We don't have a whole lot of exposure at the moment. We didn't really market the idea for competitive reasons, so, in a way, we kind of shot ourselves in the foot. We are planning on doing a month-long beta test where everyone and anyone that wants to try the system out can do so absolutely free of charge. That's right, use every feature on the site for free. Screw around, break it, or if you really want to, start a genuine auction and take advantage of all the free stuff.

What's in it for me?

Well, you get access to everything the site has to offer 100% free of charge. Also, once the beta testing phase is at a point where we feel comfortable with declaring everything stable, every user that registered during the beta phase will receive 50 free credits. That's a $50 (USD) value. Also, all testers will get first pickin's when it comes to new features, projects and contests.

We could really use everybody's help with this, so go out and spread the word!

How do we report an issue?

We make use of the wonderful service the people over at Lighthouse are offering. It's really a great issue tracking system and we've made it very easy for you to access our account to post anything strange you might find.

Closing ...

This is probably one of the biggest projects I've ever worked on. Excluding the initial basic design comps, I engineered everything myself and provided an end-to-end solution. I'm very proud of this project as a LOT of blood, time and sweat went into it. I want this thing to reach its full potential, but I can't do that without everybody's help.

Eric, Aaron, myself and the rest of the FlipSquare team thank you all in advance!

Ze Spam Goggles... ZAY DO NUTSING!

Thu, 08 May 2008 18:28:00 GMT

Well, it's been dead... again here for a while now. I've been busy with work and client projects and cursed with a recent lack of creativity when it comes to making blog posts. Not really sure what it is that I want to write about. When I do end up with an idea, it's during a time when I'm deeply involved in something important and I end up losing it.

Maybe I should keep a little black booklet with me where ever I go to jot these ideas down. I'm such an absent-minded scatter brain. Sign of a genius, I say. ;)

Some good news, though! This place is getting a heavy redesign within the next couple of weeks and I may be migrating to the latest version of Symphony. Not sure if I'll be able to transfer your comments to the new platform due to the nature of some of it's structural changes, but I can grind my teeth and manually copy over all my old articles.

Also, looks like I've been getting a sh_t-tonne of spam as of late. To combat this, I recently installed and activated an Akismet module to screen all incoming posts and mark them as spam for deletion. It seems that a lot of stuff has been slipping past the current countermeasures I have in place and mucking everything up. Only downside is that, for some odd reason, it takes FOREVER for your comment to get processed. Very irritating.

One last thing, I'm finally launching a project that I've been working on for the past year this week. Stay tuned and I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

Toodles!

Friday Feast #9

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:01:00 GMT

Haven't done one of these for close to 6 months now.

Appetizer

Q. On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 as highest), how much do you like your own handwriting?
A. 1. My own handwriting is friggin' terrible. Just ask anyone. It isn't because it's messy or anything, I just write tiny. Tiny to the point where you have to squint to see what I'm writing.

Soup

Q. Do you prefer baths or showers?
A. Definitely showers for washing, but baths for relaxing. Why the hell would you clean yourself in a tub of water? The filth stays in the tub and then sticks back on you when you get out. You can count me out of that one. Blech!

Salad

Q. What was the last bad movie you watched?
A. The Hills Have Eyes II on HBO. It's almost as if people don't even try anymore to make decent sequels. Then again, when was the last time a sequel was actually good?

Main Course

Q. Name something you are addicted to and describe how it affects your life.
A. Order. I have a small case of OCD where I simply cannot focus on work if I have to do it while my desk or personal space is messy. Everything has its own place and it MUST be there before I can start doing serious work.

Dessert

Q. Which instrument is your favorite to listen to?
A. Honestly? Please don't laugh. It's the Guqin. I'm friggin' German, born and raised and my favorite instrument is a 3000-year-old Chinese zither. It should be an accordion or something.

Pseudo Membership Campfire Service

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:49:00 GMT

I went ahead and threw together a campfire service that allows you to utilize an already existing membership system from a 3rd-party application you might already be hosting on your site. Basically, if you have a supported application installed and a user, who is logged into said application, visits your Symphony site, this service will generate XML with their logon information.

What this allows you to do is create members only areas within your Symphony install. Let's say you have a Vanilla forum on your site and you only want your Vanilla users to be able to comment on your blog articles. All you have to do is attach the appropriate datasource to your page or master wrapper and then put something like the following in your XSL template:

<xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="external-member-check/registered = 'true'">
        SHOW COMMENT FORM
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
        Sorry, only forum members can comment ...
    </xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>

Now you can create members-only areas within your site. I also have the datasources returning the user's group id ( if applicable ), so you can show different types of content / functionality based on group assignments.

Here is the XML that's returned:

// When logged in:
<external-member-check software="vanilla">
    <name>Wilhelm Murdoch</name>
    <registered>true</registered>
    <id>5</id>
    <group>2</group>
</external-member-check>


// When NOT logged in:
<external-member-check software="vanilla">
    <name>Guest</name>
    <registered>false</registered>
    <id />
    <group />
</external-member-check>

So far there is support for the following forum solutions: MyTopix, PunBB, Vanilla

I need some testers to help out with... testing. Also, if you want to create more datasources for different applications, go ahead and send your finished versions to me and I'll add it to the service. Credit, of course, will be given to the code authors.

A link to the download at Overture. Scroll to the bottom of the first post.

My Site5 Server Needs 'Enhancement' Pills

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:00:30 GMT

Well, I'm not really known to have a subtle sense of humor, but I try my best to only use it among people who understand my concept of 'funny'. I think this is one of those moments where I just need share something I find hilarious.

I just got in to work at around 8:30 this morning and started getting settled in. Usually, my morning rounds consist of checking out Digg, Facebook, my favorite web comics, MSNBC, a few blogs I frequent. Well, since I've come out of hiding I've re-added my own sites to the list. So, I checked out TDE and Jaia and found that they were both down.

Now, this gets funny when you find out that my host, Site5, likes to give each and every one of their servers a fancy name. Usually some Greek or Roman diety / hero. My particular server is named Priapus.

Does that sound familiar? You might recognize the name from all those commercials that advertise Viagra or Cialis. The condition of priapism, anyone:

... a potentially harmful medical condition in which the erect penis does not return to its flaccid state (despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation) within about four hours ...

Now, I know my Greek and Roman mythos pretty well and realize that the word is derived from the Greek god, Priapus:

In Greek mythology, Priapus was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. His Roman equivalent was Mutinus Mutunus. He was best noted for his huge, permanently erect penis, which gave rise to the medical term priapism.

Ok, so now that we all know my server is named after a phallic god, am I the only one who finds it ironic that it's having trouble 'keeping itself up'?

Symphony Search Walkthrough

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:59:00 GMT

It seems there are a few Symphonians out there, both new and old, that can't quite get the 'Search' campfire service working on their site. So, I've decided to go ahead and throw together a quick guide to help my comrades out.

Before We Start

This article assumes that you have, at the very least, the following:

A working copy of Symphony 1.7.x
The Search campfire service composed by Alistair Kearney
A rudimentary understanding of HTML
Some basic reading skills
Some searchable content on your site

First things first:

If you're here that means you've met all the requirements, so good on ya! In order to get search functionality working, you need to download and install the latest copy of the campfire service.

Click on the link I provided in the previous section and download the package. Once finished, open the package place it's entire contents in the campfire directory of your Symphony installation. In almost all cases it will be in the %Symphony Root%/campfire/ directory.

Next, go to your Symphony administration panel and navigate to your Campfire section. You'll see a new entry entitled 'Section Search'. Click on the title of the campfire service and you will be whisked away to it's information screen. At the bottom of the screen you should see a button labeled 'Install Service'. Click this button and Section Searching should now be activated on your site.

Getting Dirty:

Now that you have the actual service installed, we're going to perform some XSL magic to get your search form up and usable. Now, there are countless ways we can do this and, due to the nature of the system, we could place this code anywhere on your site. But, for the sake of simplicity, I'll take the straight forward and common approach.

Follow these steps:

Go to your page management screen in your Symphony install's administration panel.
Click on the 'Create New' link.
Give your page the title 'Search'.
Click the 'configure' button located at the top of the new page form.
Under the 'Page Environment' section you will see a list of datasources. Select the 'Section Search' datasource.
Close the configuration form by clicking the 'configure' button again.
I'll keep this VERY simple. Paste this code block into the 'Body' field of your new page and click the 'Save' button.

All done! Now you have a simple search form that, when submitted, will display an ordered list of entries from your 'entries' section.

Note: Now, you may not have an entries section. It could just as well be entitled articles under your install. If this is the case, you're going to have to change a very small bit of code. From the block of code above, you will notice a hidden element within the form entitled section. This variable specifies which section you want to search. The current value of this element is entries, but in your case it might be articles or blog. Just make sure you change the value of that element to what ever existing section you'd like to search or it just won't show any results.

You can even toy with the URL schema of the search page to change what section you'd like to search on the fly!

That's all folks!

Didn't seem so hard, did it? In this tutorial you learned how easy it is to set up content searching within your Symphony installation. Hopefully, this will help some of you guys and gals who've been having trouble in getting this type of functionality up and running on your sites. If you have any trouble, please just post a comment in this article and I'll be quick to respond.

Till next time!

There's Something About MyTopix ...

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:29:00 GMT

Alright, as most of you might have guessed, I've lost a bit of interest in MyTopix over the past few months. I doubt admitting this now will surprise anyone who follows this board. I found that, while still a solid application, the source code has aged to a point where I don't even want to look at it anymore.

The way I wrote the software is so vastly different than the way I currently code, I have to, literally, regress back the skill set I had almost 4 years ago. I think it's time to move on from this endeavor and explore new options. I don't think forum software is dead and I don't think MyTopix is a crappy piece of software, but I do think the market has become quite stale.

Now, recently, whenever I think of recommending a forum solution I constantly find myself considering Vanilla. It's small, fast, free and decently-written. The only thing that stops me from using it most of the time is that I would much rather work with a forum solution that utilizes the technologies I've now become accustomed to. From the research I've done, I can't find a single free, well-written, forum solution out there that uses cutting-edge web technologies. I'm not talking about AJAX and neat little Scriptaculous effects, I'm talking about the very core of the software. What's under the hood so-to-speak. There is nothing out there that really captivates my interest. Vanilla is seriously the closest thing I can come up with to an almost perfect forum solution for most people's needs.

So, I suppose the question here is, if there was a forum solution similar to MyTopix that operated similar to Vanilla and used a framework similar to Cogsworth (XML/XSL), would there be a strong interest? Or should we just stop beating this dead horse and let forum software finally die?

Concerning MyTopix itself I'm sure you're all wondering what happens next. Well, the release is currently stable, so now is as good a time as any to probably end development. Does this mean MyTopix is dead? Well, yes and no. I guess that all depends on you folks since MyTopix is, after all, an open source application.

Next up: "WTF DID WILHELM GO?!?!?"

Hurray for Jaia!

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:57:00 GMT

We appear to have had 2 small causes for celebration over at Jaia Interactive the other day when we found out that we were featured / mentioned on 2 relatively popular websites!

Our buddy, Nick Shepherd, was so kind as to submit the site to a few CSS galleries. One of which, Css Mania was kind enough to allow us to grace their main page. This actually scored us 1000+ hits so far within the past few days. It may not seem like much to some, but for a relatively unknown website, it's actually a pretty big deal. So, I'd like give a big thanks to the guys over at Css Mania and another one to Nick.

And if that wasn't enough to make my day, I found out, rather late, that MyTopix was mentioned in an article over at one of my frequent stops; Mashable. This article was posted a little over 2 weeks ago. This also landed us quie a few hits as it's a pretty busy website.

Both great things to happen for us over at Jaia! Thanks everybody!

Introducing, The Dev Lounge!

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:29:00 GMT

Well, it took Nick Shepherd just a few months longer than me to finally launch his personal website. I always found it kind of ironic that we never really launched a fully functional website considering we've been involved in web development for the past 7 or so years.

I imagine if we had done this years ago, we'd be a great bit more popular out there on the intertubes and probably be making a metric ton more money off our online endeavors than we currently do.

Anyhow, for those of you who are interested, Nick has created a pretty fresh design. A design, that I think, is probably the best to ever come out of his teeny, tiny brain.

If you really want to read about crap that interests Nick and musings concerning his personal life, go for it. You might regret your decision, though. I should know, I lived with the wop bastard for 4 months.

Much love, little buddy!

Are You A Douche?

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:26:31 GMT

A buddy of mine from over at Young Go Getters threw this hilarious YouTube video my way last night. I have to say that this thing had me rolling every time I watched it, which was at least a dozen times.

If you've ever been in a high-class bar or martini / cocktail lounge in a college town or large city, you'll laugh too at how accurate this video is.

Enjoy! I know I did!

Friday Feast #8

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:01:00 GMT

Haven't done this in a while!

Appetizer

Q. Describe your laundry routine. Do you have a certain day when you do it all, or do you just wash whatever you need for the next day?
A. I usually wait until I have no more boxers left. That's a pretty good indicator that my laundry needs to get done.

Soup

Q. In your opinion, what age will you be when you’ll consider yourself to truly be old?
A. 45. I dread becoming old. When I get to the point where I become incontinent, well, more than I am now, please just shoot me.

Salad

Q. What is one of your goals? Is it short-term, long-term, or both?
A. By this time next year, I plan to make at least half as much as I do working full-time off of passive income I generate off the web. Next year would be considered relatively short-term compared to some of my other goals.

Main Course

Q. Name something unbelievable you’ve seen or read lately.
A. I saw 2 bums fighting over a begging spot in the middle of the street on my way home last week. That was something unbelievable at the time.

Dessert

Q. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how happy are you today?
A. I'm at work, so that would be a 1. I'm a 10 when I get home. After a beer, of course.

I think it's about time I RE-learn ...

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:34:00 GMT

... my native tongue. As some of you know, I was born and raised in Germany. When I was very young, my mother married my step-father who was in the USAF. Eventually, he got stationed back in the good'ole U.S. of A and we had to tag along. Over the course of the next few years I almost entirely lost my ability to speak German. Thanks to H.S. German classes I was able to learn a small amount of it back, but ...

because of total immersion and the fact that my mother only spoke German to me when she was yelling, I was still unable to have more than just a basic conversation with my relatives and fellow Germans. Ironically, my mother yelled at me a lot, so you'd think I'd remember the language a bit better than I did.

Ironically, my mother yelled at me a lot, so you'd think I'd remember the language a bit better than I did.

Anyhow, my relatives will be visiting us next year and I want to make a good impression. I have decided to fully relearn German on my own and just surprise everybody. Only problem is I couldn't find any decent software or books to really help me along. What you really need is a sort of simulated immersion to get the most out of your lessons. After a bit of research, I found out about a little piece of language tutoring software named Rosetta Stone.

I read some of the reviews and tried out the demo and, eventually, I became convinced I had to buy it. So $320 later, I can honestly say that this was the best investment I've made in a long time. As soon as I popped in the German 1 & 2 CD I was learning.

Naturally, the first few lessons cover the basics of the language; most of which I already knew. This didn't bother me so much as it's great to have a guided refresher and I did pick up on a few new words and grammar that was completely lost to me before last night.

I've only done the first 2 lessons of German 1, but I'm actually convinced I'll be speaking near fluently by the time my relatives fly down to visit next year!

Seriously, WHERE ARE YOU!?!?

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:16:25 GMT

Well, it's been a little over a month now and I thought I'd take the moment out of my busy schedule to give all 3 of my readers a quick update.

I've been in Chicago now for almost a month and am loving it. Currently, I am situated in a small sublet within the neighborhood of Hyde Park. I can't really say anything nice about this place because it's filled with retarded College kids, but who am I to complain. I suppose this little thing is a small price to pay to be able to work up here.

I'll be moving into my own pad here pretty soon and finally settle in. Hopefully, I'll find a place in the Uptown or Wicker Park area. I'm looking at one apartment that overlooks Lake Michigan. The beach is, literally, right across the street.

As far as stuff to do in this town, you could seriously find something great to occupy yourself with every minute of every day for the rest of your life and still not run out of diversions; It's a big city. There's just so much fun stuff to do and it's all close together. Unfortunately, I haven't really had the chance to do much of anything. Call it a personality flaw, but I usually don't do a thing when I get to a new place until I feel 100% settled in. Although I live and work in this town, I really won't feel like I belong here until I get my own place.

Meh. We'll see what happens in the next month. In the mean time, I'll try to post a more often here. I still have a few more MyTopix tutorials planned, so stay tuned for that.