Chris Barr

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.

jQuery

What? But I've already said on my site that I prefer Mootools! Well, at work they already had a project with jQuery implemented, so I had to learn it to be able to work with it. At first I was not a fan at all because Mootools comes with everything you need in one download and it felt like jQuery needed a plugin to do every little extra thing I wanted to do. After a while I discovered jQuery UI which has everything I normally need. Just link to both of these files and you've got all the functionality you need. Everything I used to do with Mootools can be done with what feels like less code, and much easier to understand. I'm a fan now.

Podcasts & Audio Books

Audio Podcasts: With a normal 8-5 job now, I've got 40 minutes in the car each day and a lot of free time in the evening. I've got about 2 to 4 podcasts per week I listen to in the car or when I'm at the gym. Normally in a week I'll listen to This Week In Tech, Leo Laporte's weekly podcast about technology news - released on Monday mornings. Around Wednesday Leo also releases MacBreak Weekly, his podcast about Apple and Mac related news. On a much less regular basis Merlin Mann has a hilarious podcast he describes as "Bathroom humor with a masters degree" called You Look Nice Today, which is probably my favorite. Lastly, since Lost is my absolute favorite show on TV, so I try to soak up as much knowledge about it as I can, and that's where The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack comes in. When Lost has a season on the air, these guys do two podcasts per episode, which is an insane time commitment! They have great listener feedback about the show and I usually end up learning a lot about what happened in the most recent episode, more than I picked up on my own.

Video Podcasts: When I'm at home, there's several video podcasts I watch during the week as well. Revision 3 has some great content, and is the source of all the video podcasts I watch. My weekly tradition is of course to sit back and watch Diggnation, another favorite of mine. Just two guys talking about any kind of cool or weird news story that made it to Digg.com this past week. PopSiren is another great one about music, cool new web trends, etc. I find so much of my new music from recommendations on this show. Another weekly must for me is The Totally Rad Show. I don't have enough time to watch every new movie that comes out or play every new game, so this show is my filter so I can decide what is worth watching. They review games, movies, and some other stuff as well - but movies and games is all I usually care about.

Audio Books: I don't read as many books as I probably should, including some classic books that I'm surprised I've never read. When I'm out of podcasts, what better way could there be to use the time I spend driving to and from work? Most recently I've finished Phillip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", which is the book Blade Runner was based on. I finally watched Blade Runner for the first time about 2 months ago and I can't say it was great, but I'm glad I saw it. The book was much better, and it included entire plot lines left out by the movie. Not an amazing book, but way better than the movie. I'm currently in the middle of listening to George Orwell's "1984", which I'm surprised I've never had the chance to read before. Mr. Orwell may have had the year wrong, but many of his predictions have come true and it's a very interesting story so far.

Twitter

A while ago I blogged about starting to use Twitter, and I haven't stopped since. It's addictive to share with friends and people you know online, or even follow certain internet celebrities and just see what they're up to. I've gotten away from using the actual website and I've been using Twhirl, which is a great little desktop app for checking up on all the people you follow and also posting updates. I try not to use it too much at work or else I get distracted, but I'll check it every hour or so, just so I can let the world know what I'm thinking or doing. If you want to, follow me on Twitter!

Tea

I've never been much of a morning person, and I've never liked coffee. Now with my new job I actually have to be up fairly early and Tea is a great (and rather tasty) alternative to coffee. Right now I'm still educating myself about what particular varieties of tea I like. I just order some small sampler packs with several different flavors of a type of tea, so far I've tried Green tea, Oolong tea, Black tea, White tea, and some Herbal teas. So many different kinds out there to try, and eventually I'll know what my tastes are and i can narrow it down to just the small few I find outstanding. As of now I've been ordering all my teas from Adagio, which has been great, but I'll probably try out some other places as well so I'm not limiting myself.