Chris Barr

New Years Resolutions

Friday, January 01, 2010

It’s a new year, and a new decade. I know 2010 will be a great year for me, and I’m going to do my best to make sure of that by setting a few new years resolutions for myself.

• Take 1 photo a day and blog it to force myself to get more creative - I’m keeping it in a tumblr blog you can follow here: http://2010photos.tumblr.com
• Lose 10 pounds
• Make a short film about my trip to Togo, Africa in July
• Try to get a photo published somewhere or in a local gallery

So most of these are photography related, but I think these all revolve around my trip to Africa later this year. This is more than likely a once in a lifetime trip, and I really want to make sure that I take some amazing photos and videos to remember it by.

Comparing jQuery objects

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Just wanted to post a quick blog update with a cool jQuery trick I’ve been using recently. Every now and then I need to compare one jQuery object to another but a simple $(this) == someObject doesn’t do anything. As it turns out jQuery objects are actually stored internally as an array and you can’t just directly compare arrays.

So with that in mind, the easiest and quickest solution is to just access the items in the array and compare those instead. Luckily the very first item in the jQuery array is all we need here, so to access it you simply need to put in square brackets the array item number you want like so: $(this)[0]. So check out the code example below.

<div id="nav">
    <a href="#">link 1</a>
    <a href="#">link 2</a>
    <a href="#">link 3</a>
    <a href="#">link 4</a>
</div>

<script type="text'javascript">
$(
    allItems = $("#nav a");  
    secondItem = $("#nav a:nth-child(2)");

    //loop through each item in this jQuery collection
    allItems.each(function(){
        //Compare the current jQuery object with the saved jQuery object
        //by accessing the first item in the array of each object.
        if($(this)[0] == secondItem[0]){
            //we are on the second item! Give it a red background
            $(this).css("background-color","red");
        }
    });
});
</script>

Photos from the Pensacola Lighthouse

Thursday, May 07, 2009

My dad came into town to visit me and we were looking for something to do other than watch movies or try new restaurants (although we did find some great ones.) With my dad being a big fan of lighthouses and myself always looking for a cool new location for photos we decided to visit the Pensacola Lighthouse on the Naval base. As a bonus, we also got to visit Fort Barrancas, although it was closed when we got to it.

Upon entering the lighthouse we had to wait for the previous tour group to get down from the top since there's only so many allowed up there at a time. We wondered around looking at hundred year old artifacts found on site from the lighthouse keepers. There was a great little area in the basement with some old equipment from the 50's, like scales and microscopes, to study the artifacts closer. It was mostly just old bullet casings and coins, but I was more interested in the classic equipment used to study them.

It was finally time for my dad and I to take the trip up to the top of the lighthouse, and we were the only two in our "group". 191 feet up on a 177 step rot-iron spiral staircase that you can clearly see through all the way to the bottom! It was very nerve racking climbing this staircase, but it was worth it. Upon reaching the top we were greeted by a friendly tour guide and a gigantic lamp towering over us.

The guide told us the lamp contains two 1000 watt bulbs (one is a backup) and the worlds largest fresnel lenses. At night the list is visible for up to 27 miles at sea, it would be even further if it wasn't for the curvature of the earth! Stepping ut on the balcony provided an amazing view of the Pensacola Bay and everything around it - I was able to get some great panoramic photos here.

The guide was asking about my camera, and we struck up a little conversation about photography. I guess he liked us because he decided since we were the last group and a fellow photographer he took down the "no trespassing" sign and allowed us to go up one more level to be face to face with the giant fresnel lenses. A truly unique experience that everyone doesn't get to do, and I got some pretty interesting photos because of it.

After the lighthouse, we stopped briefly at the fort and then at the cemetery - graves as far as you can see is a very sobering sight. You can view the Entire photo set on Flickr.

MIXed up in Las Vegas

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Once a year my company, AppRiver, allows me to attend one work related conference and my for first year working here I’ll be attending MIX ‘09 in Las Vegas!  Until recently, this wasn’t even a conference I’ve heard of, so don’t worry if you haven’t heard of it before either.  Mix is an annual conference for web designers and developers with a heavy focus on Microsoft technologies (also sponsored by Microsoft).

So, I’m headed out to Vegas on Monday the 16th and expect to learn a lot and have a blast doing so for about a week.  I’m scheduled for a few different sessions that I’m excited about attending, and there’s tons and tons of sessions to attend. Need I even mention this all takes place in Las Vegas?  I took a trip out there about 3 years ago with my dad and had a blast, so I fully expect to have a great time when I’m not doing web related stuff.  I know the grand canyon and the Hoover Dam are fairly close, and it would just be a dream come true to see either one of these (or both!).

I’ll hopefully be fully armed with my laptop and camera where ever I go, and a goal I’m going to try and set for myself is to do a daily photo-blog of what’s going on at the conference and anything else I can take pictures of.  It’s my first conference and I’m usually pretty trigger happy, so expect lots of photos.

More info about Mix here: http://2009.visitmix.com

Stroke of Insight

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Watch on Ted.com: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Radiohead Box Set = Awesome

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Recently I discovered woot.com, they sell one product a day and only have a limited supply - so demand is usually high and the sell out fast! I was up late one night last week and saw they had a seven-album Radiohead box set for only $45! With Radiohead being my all time favorite band, I had to spring for this. For those less fortunate, you can still pick up the Radiohead Box Set on Amazon.

The box set itself is just plain gorgeous, not to mention the art on each of the seven albums and their respective booklets. I took some photos, click though for a larger version.

Restoring from a Time Machine Backup

Saturday, January 24, 2009

It's usually a good idea to wipe off your hard drive and start fresh once every year or so, regardless of what OS you run. In the past it's been a thing I've dreaded mostly due to the huge time commitment involved. My process before was to:

1. Make sure all important files were backed up (1 hour minimum)
2. Wipe the hard drive and re-install OS X (1-2 hours)
3. Reboot and install OS updates (~30 minutes)
4. Copy all the backed up file back onto the machine (~1 hour)
5. Install all software needed from installation disks and the web (3-4 hours No thanks to Creative Suite...)

Needless to say, that's pretty much an all day event. It involved so many steps that were spaced out just enough so that you couldn't really leave and get anything done. It can also cause a lot of mental stress because you're always worried with "Did I remember to back up my _____???" In the end, it was worth it though, I got rid of all kinds of junk that had built up and I ended up with a faster machine that's no longer bogged down.

Enter Time Machine. I began to use this last year and haven't looked back yet. For those that don't yet know, Time Machine is Apple's brilliant and easy backup solutions. You just designate another hard drive for backups, and once an hour it makes a copy of all the files that have changed. Because of this I have pretty much everything I've worked on since the beginning of 2008 - and multiples copies of it.

For those curious, I choose to trust my data with a Drobo, which is like RAID for dummies. I've got two redundant 1 Terabyte drives - I feel my data is safe.

One of the best new features in OS X was the ability to use that Time Machine backup as a way to restore your computer to a previous state. This is perfect for you if your hard drive crashes, or even if you're having problems. My initial thought was that if I was having problems, wouldn't restoring from Time Machine just restore the problems as well? In short, no. Time Machine only backs up your user data, no system files are backed up and noting that can be re-generated will be backed up (things like caches and your spotlight index).

Recently my Macbook Pro was feeling pretty sluggish. Videos didn't play smoothly, applications took forever to load, and importing and browsing through my photos in iPhoto was painfully slow. It was time for a clean start. Lucky for me, Time Machine removes the majority of the steps I listed above. Basically all that needs to be done now is:

1. Wipe the drive, install OS X
2. Restore from Time Machine
3. Install OS updates

Now this isn't a quick process, but it's no longer a thought intensive, worrisome, all day process. So if you're in a similar situation to mine and you're already using Time Machine, lets get started! Follow the jump to read more.

Flash Drive Evolution

Sunday, January 11, 2009

I'm constantly amazed by how disk storage is constantly growing larger, yet takes on a smaller form factor at the same time. Take a look way back in 1956 when IBM made the worlds first hard drive called the IBM 305, a 5 Megabyte disk that actually had to be transported via forklift and airplane! It weighed in at just over 1 ton and cost $160,000! Today 5MB of space is hardly enough to store a single song or photograph. It's just a tiny amount to us today, but back then it was revolutionary.

Several years ago I purchased a 256MB flash drive that I could keep in pocket for about $20-$30. This is over 50 times the storage at 1/8000th the price of IBM's first hard drive! Again a few years later I spent another $20-$30 and bought a 1 Gigabyte flash drive for a similar price, and roughly half the physical size. When compared to IBM's original, this has 200 times the storage!

I usually use my flash drives to transfer my music from my home to my work computer, or share photos with friends. All of these take up a considerable amount of storage, so I decided it was time for yet another upgrade. I had heard about this awesome little KingMax 8GB flash drive that's roughly the size of a paperclip and only cost me $12 + shipping. To top all of that off, it's completely washer/dryer safe as well!

We've really come a long way in storage. Check out my USB flash drive heritage.

Favorite Music of 2008

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Thinking back over all the new music I discovered this past year, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite albums (in no particular order). Not all of these were released in the past year, it’s just that I’ve discovered them in the past year.  They’re are amazing albums I can listen to over and over again.  If you haven’t heard anything on this list, go get it right now!

There’s links to download music after the jump, and there’s even some free stuff too!

How to use the YUI compressor

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Compressing your javascript and CSS is a easy way to save bandwidth and make a site’s download and performance feel a bit snappier. There’s lots of tools to allow you to do this, but from my research it seems that Yahoo!‘s YUI compressor is the overall best.  Sure there’s others out there like JSmin and Dean Edward’s packer, but YUI offers a higher compression ratio, it also works with CSS files, and it’ won’t obfuscate your code.

Compressors work by removing all comments and whitespace (line breaks), and in some cases they will actually analyze your code and shrink variable names.  Using compression can result in up to a 60% decrease in file size!  So lets get started in learning how to use the YUI compressor!

Broken Lens?

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Last night I was asked to take some pictures fo a special music event at Seven22. Right before everything started I was setting up my equipment and the glass completely fell out of my Nikkor 18-135mm lens! I needed this lens to shoot with tonight, and everything was starting in about 5 minutes, so my quick fix was to just screw on my UV filter on top of the glass to hold it in place. That seemed to work fine as a temporary solution and the pictures turned out alright, but clearly this isn't a permanent solution!

I decided to inspect things closer, and it turns out that this glass is actually threaded inside the lens casing. Somehow from all kinds of screwing and unscrewing of lens filters and hoods, this must have loosened the threading on the glass. I carefully put everything back together and screwed it back in using a microfiber cloth. Everything seems to be back to normal. What a relief!

Things I’ve Grown to Like

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Wow, several months since my last entry, so it's about time I wrote something here.

I've moved to Pensacola and I've had lots of new things to do and try since my move. This is a list of those things and why I like them.
I'll be talking about:

• jQuery
• Podcasts & Audio Books
• Twitter
• Tea

Click the jump to read more.

Relocation

Thursday, July 03, 2008

It’s been a while since my last post, and that’s due to life being crazy!  Derek got married and I was in the wedding, and I quit my job at CYber SYtes because I got a better offer from AppRiver.  Taking this job unfortunately meant for me that I had to move to Pensacola!

I’m all moved into my apartment here finally, and I’ve got some photos of my new place up now.

Employment

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Well, I’ve been on the job search for about a month now and it’s finally over.  I love being part of Eject Media, but it just hasn’t been netting me enough money, and when it does the work can be inconsistent.  I plan to stay with it though, so don’t worry!

Last Wednesday I sent out about 15 nicely printed resumé‘s and cover letters to various companies.  On Friday of that week I got a call back from Cyber Sytes saying they wanted to meet with me soon….like the coming Monday.  I went in, met with everyone (literally), and they offered me a job as a web designer on the spot!  That was yesterday, and today was my first day there.

So far so good, I’ve got one day under my belt for now.  Ironically when I start my first major project tomorrow it will be for a company I interviewed with several weeks ago and was turned down for!

The Comic Sans Effect

Friday, April 25, 2008

If you don’t already know, I’m a huge advocate of the Ban Comic Sans site.  It’s a bad font, and it’s just plain overused.  Look for it next time you see anything that’s been designed, I’ve seen it everywhere from menus to billboards.  Another font that I similarly despise is Papyrus, so much to that I own http://banpapyrus.com - one day I’ll get around to making a real site for it, I promise.

I suppose you can link the use of comic sans to print design, but it really can be used in any kind of media.  But, I got to thinking the other day, every different type of media has it’s own “comic sans” per se.  These are all extremely common to see in their respective media types, but that’s because they’ve become overused and bland now.  Whenever I see any of these, it makes me wonder if the designer behind it is actually aware of how incredibly overused they are!  The problem with any of these is that when you look at a design, I shouldn’t see the tools or fonts used, I should see the design and overall message.

I’ve got a more detailed write up about all these after the jump.