I had hot dogs for lunch today, which I heated up on the stove and consumed on some toasted hot dog buns with ketchup. As I was reheating my meaty treat, I realized something: you can cook a hot dog in just about every way you can imagine, and it will still taste just fine. In fact, more often than not, they wind up tasting delicious. Just off the top of my head, you can: microwave, boil, steam, broil, bake, stir-fry, grill, and roast them. Beyond the method of cooking, hot dogs also have an extraordinary tolerance for how much they are actually cooked. As long as the middle is warm, and the outside isn’t on fire, your hot dog will turn out just fine. How many other foods can claim such versatility? Not many, I assure you.

So when designing a piece of software, robot, building, or anything else that demands reliability, remember: be as the hot dog. Be versatile. Be durable. Be strong. Most of all, be delicious.

I was thinking yesterday of things I could write about in my blog, and a lot of them seemed really interesting and amusing, the sorts of things that people tend to want to read about. Of course, they were almost all anecdotes from my personal life, or just random oddities that I had stumbled over. So how could I possibly write about them in a blog that’s supposed to be strictly informational?

It’s simple really: change the premise of the blog and pretend that nothing happened.

So welcome back to exactly the same thing. It’s always been this way. Really. I promise.

At work today, my boss asked me to write a tag library for Spring, and in the process, I found these two really neat Javascript libraries that reduce a lot of the tedium of writing an AJAX (Asychronous Javascript And XML) web application.

• Prototype - A fairly large (~50kb) Javascript library that defines several classes to make your life easier. There are many functions provided that simply reduce the amount of typing you have to do, and even Ruby-style closures for lists, through the Enumeration class. Of course, it also provides some great classes for AJAX tasks as well. However, be warned, there is very little official documentation for Prototype.
• script.aculo.us - A Javascript library that layers itself on top of Prototype and adds a plethora of eye candy. Some of the effects it includes are: drag & drop support, fading, sliding panels, and highlighting.

Working with either library is extremely pleasant, especially when compared to the task of manually coding all of the functionality that they provide for free. Also, I’ve seen the end results on many websites and they look great. Highly recommended.

I recently purchased the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s latest album, Stadium Arcadium, and have spent the past few days listening to its two discs, named Jupiter and Mars, for reasons that I’ll speculate about in a bit. My initial impressions have been overwhelmingly positive; the tracks of Stadium Arcadium are now regularly circulating in my Giant Playlist of Music ™.

The first disc, Jupiter, by far the more restrained of the two, begins with the now instantly recognizable “Dani California,” which is merely “very good” until John Frusciante launches into an incendiary solo near the end of the track. Frusciante’s guitar work on this album is simply remarkable, and is one of the main reasons I like Stadium Arcadium so much. Most of the remainder of the Jupiter disc is composed of slow ballads, reminiscent of “Under the Bridge.” Frankly, I prefer Mars over Jupiter, but the ballads are all well done. When I first listened to Jupiter though, it left me wondering, “Where’s the funk?”

Luckily, Mars proved to be the answer. Here, we hear Flea returning to the hyperactive slap-pop style that characterized much of the Chili Peppers’ earlier work. It works wonderfully. The tracks here are catchy, memorable, and above all, funky. Every member of the band shines here, from Chad Smith’s solid drumming, to Anthony Kiedis’ supercharged vocals. Mars is a disc that makes you want to move, and while it might not inspire some to get up and dance, it will certainly leave a huge, silly grin on your face.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers haven’t released an album in four years, and suddenly they drop this massive two disc set on the world. While it may not explore many new musical territories, it shows the Chili Peppers maturing as a band, at times preferring the sublime over the psychedelic, but no matter what, still doing what they do best: having fun.

Hey everyone, this is the first post in my experimental foray into WordPress blogging. Exciting.

I have plans for this blog, big plans.  Let me explain.  I’ve been trying to quit Slashdot/digg recently, seeing as the level of commentary on those sites has been reduced to screaming 14 year old boys trying to out-1337 each other.  Of course, I still need somewhere to find neat news about everything a geek might be interested in, including but not limited too: hardware, software, programming, web development, gaming, science/technology developments, music, and monkeys.

So, being the enterprising and naive soul that I am, I have this dream of turning this blog into a source of all of the above.  Wish me luck.