How quickly we forget the past.

I really hate doing this, but I have to weigh in on Miley Cyrus. This media swarm and frenzy over her lately is massive. I'm just adding to the pile of worthless attention that we are giving her. But alas I'm fed up with our response to what she's doing. So I can be silent no more.

We have the fans and the haters. I am a hater. I'm ok with that. It seemed on my facebook feed after the Twerking incident that she had done something to change the world... are we overreacting a little bit here. We have two entertainers doing what they do best. Entertaining us. Consuming our attention. Giving us something to watch and talk about later. I'm not the one to judge if what she did was morally wrong or right, but it seems the general consensus was that she tarnished whatever clean image she had before.

But the act it self and pure raunchiness and her flaunting of sexuality paired with the all American good girl image that we were accustomed to seeing simply evaporated instantly when she took to the stage. This abrupt jostling of perception and method of forcing sexuality upon viewers is the cause of the attention.

But quite simply our society loves to see things crash and burn.

Things and Stuff

I'm surrounded by things.

• Things I own. 
• Things to do. 
• Things that need fixing. 
• Things that need ignoring. 

I have lots of stuff too.

• stuff I don't use
• stuff I need to get rid of
• stuff I wear
• stuff I use a lot
• stuff I care about

Is my life so much more fulfilling because I have lots of things and stuff? I have all these things, but have they really brought some sort of significant change or additional substance to my life. I can't say that anything that I have ever bought has really had a lasting impact on my life. There is no thing that any time I use it where I consistently am thankful that I have that thing.  

The things that really mean something to me only seem to actually have meaning once they are gone. A sad realization that I have come to. I'm not sure if its simply because in this world of abundance, that I go from one thing to the next. If that one thing wasn't making me feel good, there are certainly other things that I can use, do, or participate in that would do.

I don't think I'm making a really good point so far. This seems so vague. Perhaps its my wording. The use of a word that could be anything. Take 2.

What would you do if you had nothing but the clothes on your back? No toothpaste, no closet full of clothes, no laptop, no iphone, no fridge full of food, and no sofas to sit on. Life would be considerably different. The things that used to be so important would seem incredibly trivial. Checking and chatting on facebook would be the last thing on your to do  list. Finding something to eat. A place to sleep at night. Now those would be on the forefront of your mind. 

Is it so inconceivable to imagine a world without youtube videos? Media has evolved incredibly in the past 10 years. We've gone from having short attention spans to having none at all. We've shortened and condensed so many things into bits. Data is the limit we must always consider. Is it too long, will it fit? 

Digital Escape

I  often wonder is it possible now to live without being connected to internet. Not that I cannot live without it, but could I escape from it. Could I actually not connect to the internet for an entire month while living in the United States. I'm sure its doable. But for a web developer, Facebook checker, tweeter, and smartphone user. It could be very difficult to get away from it all.

I would kind of like a world without my cell phone. Not having to stay up to date on email. Hearing first hand from  friends and family about things that they are doing. As a society we simply can't just remove the internet from our lives. It would be incredibly interesting if it was just shut off for a day. Image the electricity we would save!

I would love to spend a month without being connected to the internet. I think it would be incredibly interesting to disappear digitally. Would anyone even notice that I was gone? Will my Facebook posts be missed, why isn't he checking his email? Why hasn't he responded to my texts? Or would they carry on, oblivious to the fact that they had lost a measly one person from our vast social networks.

state of asherrard

I live in a world that puts Justin Bieber right next to a Federal government shutdown. Something is seriously wrong.

We are so distracted with the billion things that we could do. Instead of staying focused on something important.

The result of hyper-media. We simply cannot consume information any faster. Unless there was a direct download of info into our own thoughts. We have been overloaded with choice. Entertainment is practically force-fed down our throats.  An ad on the radio invites me to watch a tv show, which in turn wants me to purchase more products, and watch more tv shows. I feel like it will never end.

Feeling like the world we've engineered and designed is falling apart. But there is always a hope that we can stop the spiral downward.

Photograph vs. Image

I took a photograph yesterday. 

What a monumental occasion! No one does that nowadays... There are probably legitimately a bagillion images floating around in the cloud. Notice I said images, I try to use the term photograph and image correctly.

To me a real photograph is well, real. 

Its tangible, I can hold it in my hand. The light that I captured in my camera is my view. It can't be shared on facebook, or instagram filtered. I could develop it myself if I had a darkroom. The process happens before your eyes.

I'll never forget the first black and white print that I made from start to finish.

 I took the film out in the dark. I processed the negatives. I let them dry. I took then took the negatives and turned them into something real. All without any computational power. Nothing got broken down into bytes and bits. Uploaded or transferred. No compression lossage. It was real and raw. And it was in my face. The process of creating a photograph is something that I will always love.

A real chemical reaction to light that will sit in my camera and wait to get developed until I use up all the film. Then I will take it in to get developed. Those darn machines will automate the process. And hell, the incredibly expensive machine will spit out my prints in whatever size I want. 1 hour photo was a pretty big accomplishment now that I think about it. I can hold my photographs. I can show them to anyone in the real world and I can hear what they have to say about them. They can get them smudgy, they will fade. The color will not always look right. But they are above all things, real.

But we needed things faster.

Our patience is dwindling nowadays. If we're not in the loop within five minutes of something happening, then we've lost the opportunity to be first. To get the most likes, to get the most comments, and to get the most pageviews. In this immediacy we live in, images are captured quickly, and seen by millions within seconds/minutes. But we really have taken the photograph for granted.

The photograph is not immediate. 

It will never be  transmitted via frequency. It is a moment in time. With memories attached to it. It can connect you to a time you now can't remember. It will not lie to you. There is no photo manipulation. The ink cannot be warped, twisted, transformed, and enhanced to our liking.  That was what it looked like. That was the real color. That was the real shape of things (So long as you shot 35mm). A photograph is definitive. It will never be overwritten.

It's not just something that you ate for dinner and  want to show your friends how well you can cook. The photograph and the act of taking a photograph tells all those around and involved that this moment will live on past the fleeting grip that time holds on us. We certainly will not remember what we were wearing on that day in 1996 when we went to the zoo. But the photograph we took can tell us exactly that. We were there, mom made us stop what we were doing and took  a photograph of us. Seeing it 20 years later can make us see the changes that have occurred and can bring us back to what it felt like to be 7 years old.

I certainly believe that digital images can have a similar effect. But honestly, can you take out your external hard drive with photos from 1996, and hand it to someone to flip through...

They each have their advantages. I cannot make everyone switch to film. Nor am I trying to mount a campaign to do so. But I feel that the process and meaning of a photograph carry so much more weight than an image of yourself in the mirror, cell phone in hand. I will certainly be using my digital camera and film camera in the future.

 

FED Journey and unlearning jquery

Unlearning jQuery and switching to doing things with native JavaScript may seem a little crazy, but then again for me it kind of makes sense. There's a good amount of bandwith that can be saved. An in the race against the 1 second load time, it makes a lot more sense to ditch jQuery. Yes it has many useful functions... yes it saves a lot of time and code, and yes it makes cross browser sooo much easier, but I say that it is time to take off the training wheels as a front end developer and get down and dirty with pure JavaScript!

I used to barely know how to write JavaScript .. let alone how jQuery worked. But after taking a very brief look at the jQuery source I started to understand this whole library thing... its very elegant. I want to do it. I cringe every time a web developer throws a jQuery plugin at a problem... yes someone has done a lot of work to help you out and do something very cool visually or even experience wise. But in how much of their 20 or more kb plugin are you using... there's a lot of options that you never touch. The world doesn't need another jQuery slider.

DO IT THE HARD WAY!!! 

You'll learn more.

Things to accomplish

Blog more. Write more. Workout more. Code more. Photograph more.
Play less video games. Eat less.
Get more focused.

That is all for now

Transformation Step 1

I'm starting a journey.
This isn't a sprint.
This is training for something greater and really accomplishing lasting change.
This isn't a quick fix, a fad, or something that just sounds good.

I am going to morph myself into something greater. Physically and spiritually. I have had a desire to change things that I didn't like about myself for the longest time. I wanted to quit smoking for a long time, and I've accomplished that! I'm at over 90 days without a cigarette.  If I can do that on my own. I know that I can accomplish anything. And with help and support I can do so much more. I'm not talking about just eating better and working out more, I want to get to a point where I don't think about it, its just who I am and what I do. Being physically fit is definitely a goal of mine. I've been running on and off for the past few weeks. Not really as consistently as I'd like, but at least I'm doing it. Its starting to become a habit. Which is something that I'm really happy is happening.

Instead of saying I'm going to flip the healthy switch tomorrow. Or next week. Or any day or whatever I'm going to slowly turn off the unhealthy habits. One by one. Keeping a lasting change and expecting to just drop everything in one day is unrealistic, like I said, this is training myself to become better. The final race will never happen, but there's things along the way where I can benchmark my progress.

Some things that I need to get eliminate from my life by order of hardest.

1. coffee
2. Drinking
3. Eating out
4. soda
5. over eating
6. energy drinks
7. skipping workouts

Those are just a few, but in 6 months from now I'd really like to be able to quit drinking coffee. Right now I'm just setting goals for myself, I'd like to accomplish all of them, eventually. I know some are a lil unrealistic, but I think by writing down what I want to do I'll be a little more conscious about them. All in all I want to achieve a lasting and meaningful change.

Things Im thankful for

• A job
• A place to live
• an amazing family
• an awesome girlfriend
• A one of a kind dog
• My health
• the ability to walk and run
• friends who care about me
• cousins
• Aunts and uncles
• Pastors 
• My jeans
• My phone
• The internet
• chapstick
• a safe neighborhood
• snow free roads
• Clean air to breath
• Water to drink
• Food to eat
• Music to listen to
• the ability to hear that music
• Sunsets to see
• Beaches to rest on
• Trees to sit under
• Lakes to swim in
• Those who defend our country
• Those who lead our country
• Our country
• Sports teams to watch
• A cup of coffee in the morning

Making a responsive HTML email:

The core concepts:

• Percentage based tables
• Max and min widths
• A sprinkle of media queries

after looking at http://www.zurb.com/article/1119/create-emails-for-any-device-introducing-
I had some ideas on how to achieve said repsonsiveness.... this will be an ongoing thing as I try to develop a foundation template for a responsive email.

A few things I didn't like that I had to do to make it work.

To get it to display properly in IE7 I had to set a width on the body. Which is ok with me since in gmail this will be converted to a containing div. Thanks for the heads up on this http://www.emailology.org/#2  IE 7  for some odd reason only liked max width on the body... this will restrict the 100% table from filling the whole width of the browser, we need our images to only be their original size or smaller.

<body style="margin:0; padding:0; max-width:710px; margin:0 auto;" >

The core of the template works with this little container table

<td style="max-width:710px; display: block;   margin: 0 auto; padding: 0; clear:both; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
 <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" >

what it does setting it with display:block forces the table to fill the width of the container, and allows it to have a max width.

The responsive guts!

<td style="max-width:355px; display: block; float:left; ">
</td>
<td style="max-width:355px; display: block; float:left; ">
</td>

When at full width: 710px, this will display as intended, two columns floated left. But when the window shrinks below 710 the container will be too small and the columns will stack on top of each other. The trick is to do some basic math!

Also if you want something to look correct on mobile...

The main idea is to set min widths so that tables don't get to small and create gigantic vertical columns usually you will want to set this on a container table and nest tables inside of that min width tables.

style="min-width:285px; display: block; "

!!!!WARNING!!!

This is no where near completion. There's a lot of testing that needs to be done. It's just a starting point. 

Wild Game and Networking for FED in MPLS

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to a Minnesota Wild game, which was sooooo awesome! It really was a great game. Nicole and I had a great time. Although we weren't exactly front row, I will say that the excel is well designed and I still felt like I was relatively close to the action. The shootout was an awesome way to end a game.

I'm excited to go to another game and see them again. I'm already scheming on some tickets.

I've been busy lately. I think that if everything goes well, I'll be working on starting a networking event and hopefully group for front end developers in Minneapolis. Not that Im THE front end developer from MN someday I hope to be :) but there's definitely a need for a place where new and younger developers can meet and share information.

I'm eager to build a website that will be scrutinized by other developers... I'm liking concrete 5 for a cms. Its got bloggin and page management and is highly customizable.

That's all for now!

Getting Back Into Running

Making Commitments

I'm surprised at how long it took me to get off my butt and start doing something. I kept saying I was going to start running for about the past two weeks. After putting off gettting started for far too long, I finally got a run in yesterday. It wasn't long and it wasn't as physically taxing as I thought it would be, considering I quit smoking 2.5 months ago. I was thinking my lungs wouldn't help me out too much, but I was surprised. This whole getting back into shape thing isn't a sprint. Its a slow process that will require a good amount of dedication. Its a commitment.

On a good note this is like the first year that I'll be getting a tax refund. Ha. Oh my.

Here's to getting back into shape and an awesome day!

Ugly Code

truphoto update

That moment when you look at code you wrote two weeks ago... and realize its horrible. Knowing what you know now you just want to rewrite the whole darn app from the ground up. That's exactly where I'm at right now. I learned about a new JavaScript library, Backbone which is pretty awesome for a Single Page Application. Which is what I'm trying to develop. I also learned about some templating engines... mustache and handlebars.js so I'd like to combine them all into a single front end / client side solution. Because after looking at my code, its a mess.

Not as bad as some previous projects, but I didn't like the amount of HTML in my PHP. I feel like PHP should just be there for outputting JSON and interfacing with the Database along with doing server side validation and the other things that PHP is really good at.

So here goes Truphoto version 1.1 with a back end that's only going to output JSON and has a RESTful API, which means  I'll have to pretty much rewrite the back end :( but knowing much more PHP than I did 3 weeks ago I think it will be a lot cleaner. I'd like to try and implement a few HTML 5 features, just for kicks. Mainly cause I need to learn some HTML 5. So after I go for a run tonight It's time to get my developer hat back on and DEVELOP MY BUM OFF!

Life Update

Work is going great, minus the fact that I don't have photoshop, so I'm quite hindered in my ability to look at designs and be able to replicate them. I can do layout based on a jpg, but getting things pixel perfect would be near impossible. So here's to hoping that I get it tomorrow!

I feel so blessed to have met Nicole! She's amazing!!!! I really like how darn comfortable I feel when I'm with her. I want to do things right, take my time, and give this everything that I've got. I really want this to be a healthy and successful relationship. So I'm going to do all that I can to make that happen.

My dog Louie had surgery on Monday, and he has this huge incision and scar where they removed a cyst. I feel so bad for him, I hope it doesn't hurt too bad. Poor Louie!

Things are going really well and I feel incredibly blessed right now! I just want to give back and help others who aren't as fortunate. I just don't know the right place to volunteer at, something hasn't really called out to me but I've got my ears open for the right opportunity.

Change of social media homes.

I'm not going to leave all my social networks. I'm just going to consolidate. No more posting on all sorts of different things. Or checking up on what people are doing. I want to spend more of my time living, and less time observing.

So enough with the facebook statuses. Gone are the tweets. Goodby instagram. Adios tumblr. This will house my digital presence from here on out. If you want to see what I'm up to it'll be on here. I always liked my old blog. I like posting on here. I think that the medium is a little different and its message is one that I agree with.

Just wanted to let all my friends and family know that you probably wont see very many statuses from me in the future. I didn't drop off the face of the earth. Im just moving.

One Twenty Thirteen---Average Sunday

Some things that happened today.

• I wrote a pretty darn important and lengthy (for me) email to my pastor. I hope he gets around to reading it. 
• I surived the cold. 
• Me and my dog did some serious napping followed by some serious snuggling. 
• I think that I figured out how to get some bass coming from my phone to the tape adapter to my car stereo. Before the sound was super bad. I found the equalizer setting...
• I took this picture -->

Things that happen tomorrow

• I start my new job
• I will be running when I get home
• I will be taking better care of myself (not eating dumb things)
• I will be flossing
• Louie is getting his teeth cleaned. 
• I will start reading a REAL book, not something related to work or web dev

A thought to close on

Family. Friends. Relationships. And making lasting memories are getting a priority upgrade. Not that they weren't important before. I just want to make more of a conscious effort at being a better son, cousin, brother, friend, and boyfriend.

Web Development---Truphoto--Introduction

Its been a quick two weeks working on this massive project and undertaking that I'm working on.
Some things that I've learned:

1. How to use bootsrap
2. AJAX 
3. JSON (Which is way too cool for school)
4. PHP (SO MANY FUNCTIONS ANS SO MUCH MORE)
5. MySQL

From starting out with just an idea, and nothing I feel like I've come a long way. My first successful ajax request was probably the coolest I've ever felt while coding.





I've got a long way to go to get this thing completely operational. But I've got a solid framework. I'm learning so much along the way.

Whenever I got stuck I referenced these two books, which have been very helpful. When I first started I was using these every two minutes. Now I'll look at them only when I'm completely clueless. The PHP manual has been quite helpful.

Eventually I'll get my hosting sorted out, and my domain name fixed so it can be tested on an actual server. It's still local right now.

Outlook on life.

I started out as a lanky punky preppy, hippie, hip-hop junkie, skater nerd and somehow turned into a  full grow (and growing) young professional.

With a lot of help from others and God I made it to where I'm at today. I start a new job / contract on Monday. I have an amazing life. I love the people in it. I feel so blessed to have what I have. I don't know how to say thank you to all those that have supported me, prayed for me, and have been there when I needed a helping hand.





I know the road ahead of me is filled with challenges. That's just how life works. I don't know what is going to happen, but I know that I can make it through anything.  Macklemore said this quite well

"I don't control life but I control how I react to it"

Blog version 2.0

Welcome to what will be my collection of my life. 

• The things  I do. 
• The places I go.
• The people I meet.
• What I see
• What I think
• What happened
• What I'm working on
• And probably a whole lot more!

I looked at my old version of my blog, that I started in 2005. I'm pretty sure that the 16 year old me, and the 23 year old me have some different things to say. I wanted to keep the content there separate from what's on here. Its just too different. I have a purpose with this and I want to keep it focused. This isn't Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace (Those were the days).

This is me, Andrew Sherrard.
I was here.
I accomplished things.
I loved.
I lived.
I thrived.

And what follows is what I want to say to the world.
Thank you for listening.