WillChatham.com

On January 2 I’ll be going back to work at the Air Force Combat Climatology Center, but this time with a new contractor, P3I. My previous time there ended when the contract ran out and there was no money left to rehire me, but the new contract started with the new company, and it is good for a few years. They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, and Alicia and I decided we were in need of a little stability in the work scenario right now. My position will be Web Applications Developer and Designer. That’s a mouthful.

I’m really looking forward to being back there in a lot of ways. I had a lot of good friends there, and have missed the comradarie as well as being able to work on some high-end applications and systems. I’ll be able to hit the ground running since I spent a year and a half there already.

However, I’ll definitely miss the flexibility I’ve had and the fun time I’ve enjoyed with Position Builders, especially the hacky sack breaks. It was really tough to make this decision, and I feel bad about leaving what was an excellent job with great people.

So that’s the news.

Following up on the previous post about the Ion ITTUSB turntable, I can’t find one in stock anywhere. I went ahead and placed an order with Amazon, but they said they wouldn’t have it in stock until January 27 - February 15. If anyone knows of anywhere that has one of these things in stock, PLEASE let me know! I can’t wait that long!

First off, I’m glad to see that former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler is now my congressman. I think he should be much more responsive than the Weekend At Bernie’s-ish Charles Taylor. Plus, Heath can throw a football.

Secondly, a major congratulations to my brother, who will now be known as Judge Chatham. His pal Mike Snipes won as well. I am now 2 for 2 in creating websites for elected officials who win their races. Next?

Thirdly, if you are having problems installing Internet Explorer 7 (or any Windows updates) because of the Windows Genuine Advantage malware that Microsoft has forced upon us, then why not Bypass and Crack Internet Explorer 7 Genuine Windows Validation in style?

Lastly, I updated my portfolio just now. There are a few more sites that will be added in the near future.

So…you forgot that this blog used to focus more on web development and the Internet, didn’t you? No? Well I seem to have, so here’s a re-qualifying post to try and get things back on track.

Since I added SeoMoz.org to my regularly-checked RSS feeds, I’ve enjoyed many of the informative posts they have made. Recently, they featured two articles which hit home with me.

How to convince a client their site doesn’t need music was a good one. Web sites that force music upon you really grate on my nerves. Luckily, I have never had to make such a site on purpose or on accident, though I have had people ask. The explanation that usually wins the conversation for me is the one about visitors to a site already having music playing in their speakers. Just hit Myspace on any given day, and discover how annoying it is to have people’s favorite songs start blaring at you when you load their profile.

Along the same lines of client coercion relationships, they posted How to Convince a Client They Don’t Need a Splash Page. Splash pages were cool in 2000, but have since given way to usability and search engine approachability. At least in the parts of the Web where common sense rules, anyway.

My favorite quote from the article:

When we have clients who are thinking about Flash splash pages, we tell them to go to their local supermarket and bring a mime with them. Have the mime stand in front of the supermarket, and, as each customer tries to enter, do a little show that lasts two minutes, welcoming them to the supermarket and trying to explain the bread is on aisle six and milk is on sale today.

In other news, Sitepoint just released a PDF report titled The State of Web Development. The interesting part was that AJAX is quickly gaining popularity (as if I had to tell you that), and looks to overtake Flash within the next couple of years. Wow. From one inaccessible technology to another! This is progress!

At least AJAX isn’t so proprietary.

Lastly, Google announced Google Code Search today, which looks like it could be pretty useful. I haven’t played around with it enough to find out what it can really do, but they say it can find any crawlable code. I doubt this means server-side technology such as PHP, but you could at least use it to find people who have ripped off your Wordpress layout.

Oh, speaking of Wordpress, ThemePress just launched, which allows you to upload a layout, and converts it to work with Wordpress. It costs $10, which sounds pretty reasonable if it works well. I plan on trying it out for TheBestOfYoutube.com soon, so I’ll let you know what I discover.

When Internet Explorer 7 is released at the end of the year, it will totally abandon support of HTML frames on web sites. Web accessibility geeks are cheering this development, while frame-based Geocities web site owners are in a tizzy.

Ladies and Germs, introducing ChathamMusic.com.

I finally took what used to be http://music.willchatham.com and created a separate site just for it. Now that it has its own space to live, I will hopefully be able to generate more traffic for it, and I will be able to keep it better organized. Since it is running atop Wordpress, it will be a lot easier to update as well.

I figured that with the generic Chatham Music name, the new site could server for any of the Chathams who decide to record music in the future. For now though, you will find the usual Crain, Cerebellum, Undermine, Second String, The Modlins, The Merle, and music history stuff that has been there for a while. Hopefully I will have more to add soon.

An update for Firefox was released today, bringing it to version 1.5.0.4. I suggest you go get it if you don’t use Firefox, or use the auto-update feature (Help > Check For Updates) in Firefox if you do.

Harvest is a really frigging cool web-based time tracking application. I have been toying with the free demo account and am going to set up a full account when I am done writing this. If you do any sort of freelancing you should check it out.

Today I launched a site I have been working on for a publisher called Enlightened Ink. Glad to see it get out of the starting gate.

After seeing my golf balls slice off to the right every time I hit them last week, I started wondering about The Perfect Swing: Reality or Myth?. Check out all the links to tips at the bottom of the page.

Former AFCCC co-worker Jason seems to have latched onto the wonderful world of blogging quite nicely, putting together a great site for his family.

For you web developers, Vitamin seems to be coming along quite nicely, with great articles from some of the web’s leading minds. And it looks cool too.

Dell has started shipping their higher resolution laptops using a default 120dpi setting for the display. While this helps the readability of text on these systems, it makes an awful bug in Internet Explorer 6 rear its head. What happens is that IE tries to upscale gif images in addition to fonts, thus rendering them very pixellated and jagged. This frustrated me for about a week recently, until I learned the reasoning. If you want to remain at 120dpi but not have the problem, there is a registry hack you can use.

Man, oh man, I want one of these USB turntables so I can finally convert my record collection to digital format. Actually, just to be able to hear some of my old records on a nice system would be great in and of itself.

Adios.