The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy...da movie

Today the boys and I went to see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I had read all of the reviews, but I still didn't quite know what to expect. Yahoo gave it a B- and said the only people who would get into this movie were the diehards, however I thought it was quite good. There were a few times when the screenplay deviated from the book--like when Ford Prefect asked Arthur Dent to go to the pub with him without going through all the effort to convince the workmen. And there was the part when the party was on Magrethea where they jumped through these portals instead of riding in a car with Slottybotfast. My sons really liked the movie, even though I wasn't sure what to expect from them given that the story is so existential. On the way out of the theater they were already asking if there were other books in this series and if they would make movies of those books too. So that's a good sign. Marvin the Paranoid Android was absolutely great, and some toy company is going to make a bundle off of him. I recommend the movie, two thumbs up.

Adobe to Buy Macromedia

It was announced earlier this week that Adobe is going to be buying Macromedia for US$3.4 million. As a manager of a Macromedia User Group (the "Corporate Champions" group at Discover Financial Services, Inc.'s Riverwoods, Illinois headquarters), I've been reading a lot of newsgroup messages about the planned October, 2005 takeover. There is a lot of paranoia and presupposition right now about the company known for expensive packages like Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere. The Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) is practically a worldwide standard in platform-independent document sharing, and recently opensource projects have back-engineered the PDF making it very accessible. In fact, Macromedia's own ColdFusion 7.0 (just released) natively supports production of PDF documents, as does Macromedia's Flashpaper--designed to leverage the Flash player, which has near market saturation, and compete with Adobe Acrobat.

Web designers and developers have overwhelmingly cast their dollar/yen/ruble/euro votes in favor of Macromedia Dreamweaver, casting aside products like Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe GoLive. Dreamweaver advocates such as myself will be attentive to Adobe's plan for the flagship HTML package. GoLive absorbing Dreamweaver would be devastating to the development community. Dreamweaver, though, has in the past absorbed other products.

When Macromedia acquired Allaire's ColdFusion, the attempt was made to make Dreamweaver MX the development tool for ColdFusion. Basically this involved adding a few CFML extensions and giving the option of the "HomeSite"-style development arrangement of docked toolbars and grouping. This attempt at the dream of integrating the old ColdFusion Studio with Dreamweaver may never satisfy some diehards, even after the improvements in Dreamweaver MX 2004. (It's worth noting here that DW MX 2004 also combines Nick Bradbury's TopStyle functionality, too. Nick, you may recall, was the author of HomeSite).

So if there is to be a marriage of GoLive and Dreamweaver, it may be that Dreamweaver can adopt a GoLive-style development environment, bringing these users into the fold. A quick check of the classified ads for developers will not mention GoLive, rather it will ask for Dreamweaver developers. Let us hope in the next 6 months that Adobe shares the outlook that Dreamweaver absorbing GoLive is the route to take and not the
other way around.

What will surely be interesting is the fate of products like Macromedia Fireworks and Macromedia Freehand. Though these tools are nicely integrated with sister products Dreamweaver and Flash, the superiority of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator will certainly shine through. Fireworks will almost certainly be absorbed into Photoshop, and though this might be a good mix, it will make a more cost-effect package out of reach to some developers who do not have US$800 to spend on Photoshop. The same can be said of Illustrator and its step-sister Freehand.

However the chips fall, this consolidation could be seen as a positive move toward competition with software giant Microsoft and its fleet of end-to-end solutions. Possibly we're looking at the genesis of the next software giant. This will certainly be a great process to watch and participate in.

The Top 10 Guitarists of All Time

1. Peter Green
Replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers (that's a hard act to follow)...in `67 formed his own band with 2 other Bluesbreakers--was too modest so he named the band after them, "Fleetwood Mac"

2. Eric "Slowhand" Clapton
Commonly referred to as God. Started in the Fabulous Blues-Wailing Yardbirds, played with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, part of the first supergroup Cream, Derek & the Dominoes with Duanne Allman, Blind Faith....like I said, Eric Clapton is God.

3. Jimi Hendrix
"Surf music is dead"....his blues-based rock & roll was so original and so significant to everything in rock music afterwards

4. Dick Dale
King of the Surf Guitar...invented the surf sound ("Pipeline" riff)...should also be on the trumpet list--he played both guitar and trumpet on "Miserlou"

5. Buddy Holly
Popularized the Fender Stratocaster...an inspiration to many a guitar player...brought rock-a-billy into rock & roll

6. Jimmy Page
Another Yardbird...session musician for many...formed Led Zeppelin...at times even played the electric guitar with a bow--one of the most inventive guitarists of all time

7. Stevie Ray Vaughn
Elmore James would have paid to go see SRV play his own songs

8. George Harrison
He played lead guitar for The Beatles...that's a helluva thing to be able to put on a resume!

9. Joe Walsh
The James Gang, Barnstorm, The Eagles, solo work

10. Scotty Moore
guitarist for Elvis Presley and many others

Honorable Mention. There are others that I'd like to put on the list but didn't: Robbie Robertson, Duanne Allman, Steve Miller, Angus Young, Keith Richards, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Alvin Lee (Ten Years After), Jeff Beck, Eric Johnson, Carlos Santana, Yngwie Malmsteen, Tommy Bolin (Deep Purple) and Dwight Yoakum.

There are obvious others outside of rock & roll like B.B. King, Robert Johnson and Elmore James, but for my list these are "out of scope". I'll make a list of top 10 blues guitarists another time.

Macromedia MAX 2005, Linux, Patti and other tangents

Well, it's been announced...Macromedia's MAX 2005 conference will be held October 16-19, 2005 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. I answered the call for speakers, so we'll see if I will be on the roster this year. I'm hoping to talk about this special fusion of CSS and JavaScript that I use to make compelling user interfaces for Web applications.

Most of the Web application work I'm doing currently is in ColdFusion (a Macromedia product), though I've been writing a handful of ASP on the side. In a few weeks I'm going to build a computer and install Red Hat Linux on it. I have Red Hat installed on an old Celeron 400 MHz Gateway laptop, but it's beginning to breathe its last sighs. On this new box I will install Apache and write a little PHP. I will also put Tomcat on it and write a little JSP. I will then probably install ColdFusion on top of Tomcat. This will keep up my diversity in server-side languages. So there are some of my "when I have some extra time" projects.

My mother insists, though, that I wait on those projects in order to finish projects I'm committed on for her--namely cleaning out a bedroom in her house in which I slept for 6 months (whole nother story). Guests will be staying in the room over the weekend next month when my sister gets married. Alas, this will forestall my plans to take over the universe using nothing but a paperclip, a shoelace, a wad of gum and a home-made Linux box.

The Weekend is Coming

I'm looking forward to the weekend. Mainly I look forward to the weekend because it gives me a chance to sleep a couple of hours later, and I don't have to make the 50 miles to work and 50 miles home commute. Besides the 2½ to 3 hours I reclaim each day not making the drive, I also save about $5.50 in tolls and $19.00 in gas. I'm paying $2.36/gallon for gasoline. This is getting a tad expensive, especially since I put about 600 miles a week on my car. I just hope the price of gas doesn't keep going up!

But this will be a working weekend. I'm in one of my last two classes for my Masters degree (at Keller GSM), and I have a quiz to study for and part of a term project to write. Along with the normal weekend chores of laundry, garbage and vacuuming/straightening up, this will be a full weekend. I will definitely take a couple of sanity breaks, however. I will most definitely watch "Saturday Night Live" as Cameron Diaz hosts and Green Day plays. Maybe I'll go to a movie, too. There are many good ones out right now, but I'm not going to list them all here.

I've got the pope's funeral on Tivo. I recorded it since it was on at 3:00 a.m. today. So many millions of people all in one place...including 2 millions Poles...it will be quite a sight to watch. There were about 4 million people altogether that went to Rome for the funeral, which doubled the normal 3.7 million population of Rome. Millions more prayed or paraded in their home countries. In Krakow, Poland 800,000 turned out for the televised funeral of "Jan Pawel II".

I am reading "The Speaker For The Dead" by Orson Scott Card (technically I'm listening to the unabridged audio book). This is the sequel to "Ender's Game" which I finished last week. I think I like this second book in the Ender Wiggin Saga even better than the first--and I loved the first book. This book delves more into the personality and feelings of Andrew Wiggin as an adult. I'm halfway through the book, and it looks like I'm committed to reading the next 6 in the series after this one.

Enjoy the weekend!

Pope John Paul the Great

Apparently the Church doesn't confer upon a pope the title of "the Great", and it was last done in the 5th and 6th century. Among the members of the human race today, it is amazing that nearly everyone can agree that John Paul II was indeed a great man. Personally, I call that a miracle. It's a bonified miracle on a day when one can say without reservation that everyone on Earth could actually agree on something.

John Paul the Great was not just a priest or a bishop or a cardinal or a pope, he was a man that believed people could see eye to eye. He had an intense belief that deep down we're all the same. He believed that people might realize that they could treat others as they'd like to be treated themselves. John Paul the Great's message found fertile ground in the hearts of Christians, Jews, Hindu, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics and even some atheists. An atheist could believe in what John Paul the Great had to say, so remarkable were the words that came from a mere man. A Christian would add that his words came from God and a Jew wouldn't argue. A Muslim would agree and call that god Allah. Hindus and Buddhists would say that this man was surely more than just a man, and the Christians would nod in approval. Agnostics would find, perhaps for the first time, a way to reconcile their beliefs. Surely this was a great man.

His conservative opinions and interpretation of canon law were widely disputed in the Church. Protestant Christian religions would not hold themselves subject to his authority. Orthodoxy would not accept his supremacy. But no one ever turned him away when he was on their doorstep. People were awed by him. People flocked to him. People listened to him with their hearts. Could a Christian anywhere of any faith--Protestant or Catholic, Orthodox or otherwise--not see that he walked in the footsteps of the carpenter from Galilee.

The newspaper I read today said that the Church doesn't confer upon someone the title "the Great", rather it comes from a common usage--informally finding it's way into history's lexicon. I don't agree: this man simply was great, and calling him such comes naturally.

Karol Józef Wojtyla

Pray for John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyla in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. In 1978 he was formally named Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God. Informally he is referred to as pope. John Paul II is a great leader and unifier.

John Paul II is the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in 1523. John Paul II was also the first Polish pope. He studied in secret during World War II during the Nazi occupation of Poland by German. He survived being shot in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981. He pursued ecumenism seeking to end centuries-old divisions between Christian churches, with Muslims and between Christians and Jews. Most consider John Paul II support of the Polish Solidarity movement to be the impetus for the fall of communism in eastern Europe and Soviet Russia.

John Paul II is very sick, and it is possible he is being called home. Lend your prayers to a man the likes of whom the world may not see again soon.