The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar

You Know You're a Real Geek When...

you hook up a computer to the BBQ's air intake to automatically control cooking temperature.

You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.

This Crapolla is sponsored by...

In This Issue...

Bar Trek III - The Search for Diet Coke!

Job Listing of the Month

Don't you be calling me unless you fine über-Geek flesh. My mama didn't raise no fool!

Web UI developer (sunnyvale)

Job Summary

We are seeking a Web UI engineer for a several month contract with a possible conversion to perm status. You would be responsible for design and coding of our Web UI using HTML/CSS and Javascript (Prototype). You would work directly with the Director of Marketing on visual design and interaction of the product. You would be expected to write scripting in PHP and produce graphics work including some design using Photoshop.

Absolutely Required - if you don't have ALL of these attributes do NOT email us.

5+ years experience with HTML/CSS, you must provide examples of your work.
5+ years experience with one or more scripting languages (PHP, Ruby, JSP, etc); more is better.
Understand the nuances of cross-browser CSS layout.
Fluent in CSS with DIV based layout.
Experienced with graphics tools, (Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks etc.).
Excellent communicator who can manage expectations and work with the engineering, solutions engineering, and product marketing teams
Successful candidate will be highly motivated and able to work effectively in a fast paced, dynamic, team oriented environment.

Additional qualifications - prior experience with any of these are a big plus.

Training in HCI, Cognitive Science a big plus.
Some experience with one or more AJAX frameworks, Prototype based preferred.
Experience with one or more browser side graphing packages a plus.

Next steps.

If you are a contracting house, STOP. Do NOT contact us in any manner - we will not use contracting houses or recruiters for this position.
If you do not have EVERY attribute listed in #1, STOP. We will NOT interview candidates lacking these credentials.
If you pass the above tests, Email us, but be clear in the first 10 lines of your Email how you meet the requirements in #1 - do NOT merely attach a resume. We WILL evaluate your skill on the basis of the clarity of your Email to us. Provide a phone number where you can be reached.

Wow, bitchy, aren't they?

Still Looking For a Bar

My quest for a new writing abode continues. I thought I might have one on Bascom Avenue. Mrs. Fek'Lar originally appeared to not have a problem with Hooters. I gave her a fair description of the establishment. But then, a few weeks in I started getting subtle hints that maybe she wasn't okay with it.

The trouble was Hooters had a good bar for writing. It was well lit, and the barstool brought you very close the counter where you could reach the laptop. The food isn't that good, and they don't have Diet Coke. As for the women, they were at best a slight amusement. Oh well, on to the next candidate.

The Cupertino Elephant Bar was next on my list. The problem here was the brass rail that extends from the bar. This keeps me too far from the keyboard without straining my back. I didn't try the food. Next!

Tonight I'm at Hot Rok in downtown Sunnyvale. This was Mrs. Fek'Lar's idea. She sampled the food at the Farmer's Market and bought a gift certificate to get me to try it. You order a steak and it is brought out on a very hot rock, hence the name. You slice the raw meat and let it sit on the rock until done to your liking.

Although I'm sitting at a bar, this is really a higher-end restaurant. The food is excellent. They do have Diet Coke. The barstool does go all the way in. But can I work in a restaurant that has a good wine list? I certainly can't just blow in and drink soda and eat French Fries all evening long whilst considering the state of software. For one thing, they don't have French Fries. As much as I like Hot Rok, it just might be too pricy for my endeavor.

There's a sports bar on the corner of Evelyn and Fair Oaks in Sunnyvale called the Blue Bonnet. Amongst it's attributes, it advertises that it opens at 6AM. You know what that means, alcoholics! Maybe I should try there.

Starting With Nothing

LowComDom's web site (the one you're reading) is once again up for redesign. I'm working on a prototype. I think it's time to throw out old technology and start completely new. No code will be retained, only content will be brought forward.

This is an old web site, having debuted in 1995. Through the years new ideas and technology have been tacked on as we went. The truth is, all this stuff is getting heavy, hard to maintain, and difficult to move. Mojo Cam alone usually take a few days to move onto another server. That and no one seems to know if Mojo Can is hyphenated (Mojo-Cam).

This is the normal process we refer to as "organic" in the software biz. Most programs go through this. A dot release, or even a major release is just a branching of the project's main trunk. But eventually, the code becomes unmanageable. When this happens, you start all over again. You can use your old code as a reference, but you can't use any of it.

As I said, this is part of the normal project lifecycle. Once at Big A, one of their products had been worked on by so many people, there were whole sections of code that no one knew the function of. The Product Manager documented every feature of the product, and tossed out the code. The current engineering staff was forced to figure out how to build the product with modern computer science theories.

Prototyping is like writing, you start with a blank page, and you stare at it for hours. Nothing happens. Well, that's not true. Your laptop battery runs down. But at the end of the session, you're really not far from where you began. It's a physics problem. An object at rest tends to stay at rest unless a force is applied to it. So this prototype isn't going anywhere until some force is applied. I blame Sir Isaac Newton. I'm down two batteries and have nothing to show for it.

If you think about it, designing a website is a multi-dimensional problem. There's the content for which everything else serves. But then there's the packaging that makes it viewable. Creating a navigation system alone is a lot of thinking. When you have a lot of content (LowComDom has over 17,000 unique URLs) making it easy for people and search engines to find isn't a simple prospect.

I've decided that the project will have 6 central goals.

Better Readability. You getting tired of these really wide columns of text? Yeah, me too. Narrower and taller is easier on the eyes. I'm also against pure black type on pure white backgrounds. Let's lower the contrast.
Smart Layouts. Layouts should degrade gracefully on machines with small screen resolution. In some cases, tertiary elements might be withheld to keep a layout useable at low resolutions. This implies putting priorities on elements of content. Layouts should also degrade gracefully on IE. Let's face it, that crappy browser isn't going away anytime soon, so doing CSS tricks that don't work on IE need to be approached with caution. Luckily, the annoyances from The Redmond Company are fairly well documented.
The cheesy fake ads go. They were funny for a year and a half, but I can think of other smart ass crap to put in front of you.
Easier for search engines to read. This is commonly called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It's been largely ignored over the years, and we don't have good page rank. This is actually simple if you know what search engines are looking for, a well organized page. The title should be unique, the url short, there should only be one H1 tag. The content should flow like an outline.
Navigation that is simple, easy to figure out, and fully crawlable. You should be able to get to any page in no more than three clicks. All navigation elements will be generated on the fly as the page is requested, and use no JavaScript. (I'm no longer on the strict no JavaScript bandwagon anymore, but search engines don't parse and run JavaScript so if we want to be crawled better than we are today, we need to help the crawler.)
Easy to deploy and move. No one ever puts this on the requirement list, but it's very important. Remember I said it was a long process to deploy Mojo Cam? It shouldn't be these days. And on the subject of moving, this site has been moved 6 times. It's inevitable that it will move again and again. Deployment must be simple.

Just 6 little goals. Readability, smart layouts, kill the cheesy ads, SEO, simple navigation, and easy to deploy. Other than the wealth of content from all these years, the name, and the logo, this is a blue sky project.

Since this isn't WTHAIS project, there's no NDA I need to worry about. I'm going to talk about this project in The Crapolla until it's done. I'm also going to make the prototype visible as I work. On a weekly basis I'll be updating the files and commenting on what's happening.

Back to my blank page. Maybe I should change the background color.

This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.

Obama's Dog Might Have to Go Back to The Pound!

Didn't Pay His Taxes

Let's play, "Who said this?"

Heard in the halls of various software companies.

"Where would the world be if we didn't have drones?"

"It's a big long daisy-chain of crap!"

"I either need more drugs or more scotch."

"What? Are you listening to your experiences again?"

"That's redundant! That's redundant!"
"So are you."

Excuse Me

I'm looking for my Pantone color wheel.

Fek'Lar
They pay me to think. These are my thoughts. Do you think they are getting their money's worth?

Remember: The Crapolla contains my personal opinions. That's right they're mine, so get your own! And you kids get off my lawn!

Although written with the software professional in mind, my mind tends to wander all over the place, and I sometimes write about politics, mass stoopidity, dumb things I saw, and whatever else comes to mind.

From time to time, I use salty language, thus The Crapolla is not intended for children, or certain people from the Christian Right.

feed available from http://www.lowcomdom.com/crapolla/index.xml

EOJ

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