All posts in Nick’s Ramblings

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May

Happy Birthday to Dan

Categories: News and Updates, Nick's Ramblings

So everybody who reads this blog and views this comic but is completely opposed to commenting…. yeah you… you know who you are…

I’d like to offer you an excuse to lose your commenting virginity here and join me in wishing Dan a very happy birthday today. We are so incredibly proud of everything he’s done in the last year-ish, including getting married, starting med school, and being an awesome writer on this project.

Uber thanks to you Dan, and have an awesome birthday and weekend!

Best Regards - Nick

Apr

Nick’s Life Update

Categories: News and Updates, Nick's Ramblings

Tags: tech, update

Comments: 1

Hello readers and team,

First off I am very sorry for my lack of science articles lately. I’ve just finished a few hectic months of interviews and now shifting from one job to another and now getting done with a large move from one state to another. So… sorry about that lack of updates and lack of science articles.

The good news is that Dan and Seba are rock stars and have been keeping things up to date and on track. Also there is some really awesome work coming from Matias in the future after chapter 3… so keep tuned for that.

On my next series of science articles, I’ve been musing a lot about alternative energy. Here in the new town I am moving to they have a really cool zero emissions power plant that works off of the heat differential between the lake and the outside air… so it works best in winter and in summer since the lake’s temperature doesn’t fluctuate as much. Interestingly coordinates with the times of the year when more electricity is needed for heating and cooling.

So anyways, on my timeline for this year is the website redesign, some interesting forays into animation and videos for the storyline, and getting more product into the hands of readers who care.

Any thoughts from you as the reader on what you would like to see?

Best Regards and thanks for hanging with us on this.

Nick

Dec

Google Apps out of “Free”

Categories: Nick's Ramblings, Software

Comments: No

So, today we got this type of email from Google:

Hello from Google,

Here’s some important news about Google Apps—but don’t worry, there’s no need for you to take any action. We just want you to know that we’re making a change to the packages we offer.

Starting today, we’re no longer accepting new sign-ups for the free version of Google Apps (the version you’re currently using). Because you’re already a customer, this change has no impact on your service, and you can continue to use Google Apps for free.

Should you ever want to upgrade to Google Apps for Business, you’ll enjoy benefits such as 24/7 customer support, a 25 GB inbox, business controls, our 99.9% uptime guarantee, unlimited users and more for just $5 per user, per month.

You can learn more about this change in our Help Center or on the Enterprise Blog.

Thank you for using Google Apps.

Clay Bavor
Director, Google Apps

And we just wanted to take the time to thank them for the years of FREE awesome services, as well as the fact that (at least for now and cross your fingers) we are grandfathered into those services.

So here’s to you Google, for making a ridiculous amount of money off our searching habits, and then getting your hands around all of our other data as well… I mean, for providing an awesome service that we love and continue to use… yeah… that one.

Thanks

Nov

Certifications and other wastes of Time

Categories: Software

Tags: certifications, microsoft

Comments: No

Dear readers, its been a while since I’ve bored you with tales of software and other development… so here I am to ruin your day again. Actually, this is more of an apology for the lack of site updates in the last few weeks. On that note, we do have some really fun updates planned out for the site in both the short term and the long term. They are:

Easier navigation to the comic
Landing home page is more comic centered and less of a blog home page
Get rid of that stupid modal that shows up when you click on the pages in the chapter viewer
General readability enhancements, the fonts are kind of light at times.

Now for the excuse of why I have been slacking. At work (the day job that pays for this lovely project… don’t you feel sorry for me? If you do go buy stuff at Amazon using our link )… as I was saying, at work they are a Gold Level National Microsoft Certified Partner, and they require us to “progress” down certification paths and to constantly learn new stuff.

The constantly learning new stuff part isn’t new for me, that’s what you have to do when you work in web development like I have for the last 7 years… but certifications, those are another can of worms. So anyways, I am pleased to announce that I am a Microsoft Certified Professional now, specifically in HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript… I know, keep applauding… I’ll wait.

So what does that mean? Really jack diddly to be truthful, the exam was supposed to test all those new technologies and it really focused on the same old HTML, CSS and Javascript we’ve all been doing for years. In fact it felt horribly dated since it had a lot of reference to plain old Javascript functions that nobody has used in the past forever since jQuery, Mojo, or Prototype came into play. So yeah, I’m not overly impressed with the whole certification concept just yet. It has potential and I’m not giving up on it yet (especially since my employer is a Microsoft partner and values certs highly) but I begin to see why the guys here who have been working on certs for a while just don’t seem to care about them anymore.

Anywho, that’s it for the day, time to dig into the code of the site and get this thing working nicer.

Nov

Thanksgiving 2012

Categories: Nick's Ramblings

Tags: ember, Thanksgiving

Comments: No

Good evening readers. We’d like to say thank you to all of you! And the reason for that thanks, is because you all are awesome. It is quite gratifying to see the instant reception of our project. This baby is a labor of love that was long discussed between Nick and Dan, and only recently brought into execution by Seba and Matias. We have a lot of things planned out for the coming year, and early in 2013 should see the compilation of Chapter 1 into an ebook, and - readers willing- a print version.