Hi, my name is Russell Kelly, I'm happily married, to my Beautiful Wife for 7 years now. I have a step grandson who I lovingly refer to as The Little Boy. We live in Southern California, where we get to enjoy hikes and sunshine.

When I'm not in the office, I enjoy spending time with my family and photography. I'm a "hybrid" photographer in that I shoot both digital and film. I have a photoblog please stop by and take a look.

By day I'm a Sr. Web Developer for Lockheed Federal Credit Union and a Microsoft Certified Professional. In this capacity I get to write .NET applications. Some large, some small but all interesting. Which means I've worked on everything from multiple servers, load balanced transactional systems to AJAX enabled web pages. I've recently started implementing GTD (Getting Things Done) in my day to day work.

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An article in the LA Times mentioned the unhealthy air quality today. This is something I've been watching closely. I've not been outside since yesterday morning for a very short time. Where we leave is about 15 miles from the Ontario fires, and south west of the Arrowhead fires, so that smoke is going right through on it's way to the ocean. The article titled "Windblown soot, gas, and dust pose threat", says "Health officials urged the young, the elderly and those with breathing problems to stay indoors until further notice as Southern California's wildfires continued to pollute the air with smoke, gas and dust."

So even if you don't live in the immediate area of any of the fires, take precautions and stay safe. For those of you who do, please at least wear a mask, smoke inhalation even after the fire is out is extremely dangerous.

Stay Safe.

Update: Check out this map from flashearth. It shows the smoke really well.

The reports this morning is that more than 250,000 people have been evacuated from the San Diego area, and more than 1000 homes and business have been lost since Sunday. Here is a map of the fires and the evacuation centers.

Update:
Here is an updated sat image of the fires and the smoke billowing from southern california and the San Diego area.




Stay Safe.

Update: 10/24/2007 10:15am PDT: updated the link to the map, the previous version of the map had stopped being updated due to usage, the new map is from PBS.

Being asthmatic, I play a lot of attention to the weather and natural disasters. Well the fires that started yesterday completely fall into those categories. ABC7 has done a great job of keeping us update on where the fires are and where things are at with them. I was very impressed to see that they've added a mash-up map to let you know where the fires are at, check it out here.



The smoke is very very heavy today, I've stayed inside and close to my air filter. To see the path of the smoke driven by the wind, check out this sat image from NASA.

Stay safe.

Lately I've been thinking and spending quite a little bit of time reading about organization. You see currently at work I'm the only Developer. We lost a great Developer (Ed) to a company that offered him more money and the kind of work that he wanted to do (Could you blame him, I sure couldn't). Our remaining Developer who we affectionately call "Eggman", took a long flight across a big ocean to see his family(I couldn't blame him either). However these two events leave me with a lot of little things to get done that will come in  at rapid succession.

 

So I am changing a few things. First Email, well we all know that there is way to much of it. So a good system for sorting through it is required. With a little simple logic and some Outlook email rules this is fairly easy to accomplish but it does take a change in behavior. First thing I had to change, my Inbox is not my repository for email. Its more of my To-Do list. If thinks in the Inbox can't be accomplished quickly they are moved to the @Action folder. Everything in the action folder is something I am actively working on. If it something that needs read, but isn't as urgent as inbox or @Action folder, it goes in the @Review folder. I've also set up a rule that anything that is address to the company wide email group ( theentirecompany@mycompany.com ) is sent to the @Review folder. The Next folder is the @Snooze folder, items that go in here are in more of the back burner project area. I don't want to forget about them, but they aren't as urgent as the previous folders. I have two other folders that I am using that are new to me for managing my email. I have a @Waiting For folder, which are items in which I am waiting for a response before I can move on, and a @someday box, these are the emails which have good ideas that need a safe place to live until I get to them. I do have to say after several google searches, I of course landed on Scott Hanselman's blog, and these Ideas are from his article ZEB (Zero Email Bounce) and a new Outlook Rule.

So far this system has been working fairly well for me. I have added one more folder, that email tasks that have been finished and need put in to our tracking system are moved too. To make sure I have a put in a record for every completed task. So now not am I getting more things done, it looks like it to my supervisors as well.

Reading Lifehacker.com today I came across a post that peaked my interest. It's called "Discovering your learning style". I thought this was an interesting think to learn about myself. How exactly do I learn the best. So I did my best to be as truthful as I could answering the questions. The suggestions they gave actually surprised me quite a bit but really do seem useful. Anyhow here are my results. Let me know what yours were.

Happy Learning

Visual/Nonverbal 32 Visual/Verbal 28 Auditory 18 Kinesthetic 34

Your primary learning style is:

The Tactile/ Kinesthetic Learning Style

You learn best when physically engaged in a "hands on" activity. In the classroom, you benefit from a lab setting where you can manipulate materials to learn new information. You learn best when you can be physically active in the learning environment. You benefit from instructors who encourage in-class demonstrations, "hands on" student learning experiences, and field work outside the classroom.

Strategies for the Tactile/ Kinesthetic Learner:

To help you stay focused on class lecture, sit near the front of the room and take notes throughout the class period. Don't worry about correct spelling or writing in complete sentences. Jot down key words and draw pictures or make charts to help you remember the information you are hearing.

When studying, walk back and forth with textbook, notes, or flashcards in hand and read the information out loud.

Think of ways to make your learning tangible, i.e. something you can put your hands on. For example, make a model that illustrates a key concept. Spend extra time in a lab setting to learn an important procedure. Spend time in the field (e.g. a museum, historical site, or job site) to gain first-hand experience of your subject matter.

To learn a sequence of steps, make 3'x 5' flashcards for each step. Arrange the cards on a table top to represent the correct sequence. Put words, symbols, or pictures on your flashcards -- anything that helps you remember the information. Use highlighter pens in contrasting colors to emphasize important points. Limit the amount of information per card to aid recall. Practice putting the cards in order until the sequence becomes automatic.

When reviewing new information, copy key points onto a chalkboard, easel board, or other large writing surface.

Make use of the computer to reinforce learning through the sense of touch. Using word processing software, copy essential information from your notes and textbook. Use graphics, tables, and spreadsheets to further organize material that must be learned.

Listen to audio tapes on a Walkman tape player while exercising. Make your own tapes containing important course information.

What is a Web Browser: Simply put, it's a software application used to locate and display web pages. Okay that's simple enough. What is HTML?

HTML is the the standard method used for the creation of Web Pages. HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. All browsers understand HTML is it is a web standard. The W3C says that "HTML is the publishing language of the World Wide Web. Who is the W3C ? Well in their own words, "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential."

The current version of HTML is HTML 4.01 which was approved and recommended by the W3C on December 24, of 1999. However there is a reformulation of HTTML 4.0 that is a combination of HTML 4.01 and XML 1.0 called XHTML 1.0. Most modern browsers are XHTML 1.0 compliant as well.

So why do we care about this stuff. Well if HTML is the publishing language of the web, that means that all of our website use html. Even though Online Banking is a very complicated application, in the end HTML is sent to the members browser. Okay, so now we know that all the websites send HTML to the members browser, but there is a standard so all browser should render it the same way right. Well, no they don't you see different companies interrupted the standards different from others, and other companies (Microsoft) deviated completely.

How bad can it be? The Web Standard Project created the Acid Test II It is an HTML document that is written that uses HTML,CSS and PNG written to the current W3C standards. Its amazing how differently it looks in the different browsers. (If you'd like to learn more about the Acid Test, check out this article .) Heres a quick example of how the Acid Test looks in some of the common browsers.

Firefox 2.0.0.x:

Internet Explorer 6.0:

Opera 9.2:

Safari 3.0 Windows:

As you can see the difference range from very slight to no where near the mark. Now we see the importance of knowing the each browser will render the same page differently. So what a can we do if troubleshooting and figure this out....Well this one you get to blame on the Developer.