I absolutely love everything thats goin on right now in my life, and its not even summer.

This year will be a good year.

I cannot tell you how happy I was on Valentines day, the first one with my current girlfriend Kala.  Usually for me Valentines day is spent with me and my friends going to Goat Hill Tavern or something of the like.  Even when I did have a girlfriend before I didn’t really do much, partly because the last time I was in college and had no money and partly because I never really felt the need to do anything extravagant.

This year things are different.  Without going too much in depth of my current relationship status, let’s just say things are prettttaayy preetttaaayyyy good.

Kala would always say “I can’t wait to give you your gift” and I never thought too much into it.  The biggest reason being that I don’t like spoiling surprises.  So I would take what she said very lightly and patiently waited for Valentines.  I got her a gift too of course.

But no way I could have imagined what she got me!

KOBE VIIs

Anyone who knows me knows that Kobe is my man, the baller of all ballers.  He’s so sick its unbelievable.  I contemplated getting his new shoes but I did get scared of the initial price tag.  I had registered for the e-mail alerts of when they would be on sale, would watch kobe unveil a showing at the lakers game, etc.. etc… I’ve had Kobes since the Kobe Is, which were on Adidas.  I even had the Kobe IIs, and those looked like straight up space shoes.

But back to the shoes.  They are SOOOO SWEET.  My mouth actually hurt cause I was smiling so much.  I took her to Morton’s for dinner after which was fantastic as usual, but she definitely won in the battle of gifts.  I don’t wear hats so I can’t say “my hats off to you”, but if you’re reading this just know I am forever thankful.  I do fear Kala’s birthday though, how on earth am I supposed to top KOBES!?

The shoes come with 2 soles for crying out loud, a “Play Fast” sole and a “Play Strong” sole.   This is very very dangerous… For my opponents…

Anyhoo, I had to share this.  Perhaps this blog will be about me getting sick shit? But then again, its my blog, so I can have whatever I want on it.

Play Fast

Play Strong

Dem Soles

So I’ve been thinking about new topics to write about but am pretty busy with work, so I come home and get tired and end up not writing. True Story.

However I have a couple posts in the works to document about what exactly I do at Quiksilver.  I will showcase the projects I launched, details about them, and just an overall writeup.

I realized that it’d be cool to show people finished products of my work, its one of the perks of being a developer.  I love seeing something launch.

And i’ll write up a couple nonsense posts in between!

Im back!  I’ve had some posts in the works and have saved them in the “draft” state, but I realized I haven’t been cranking out posts like I should.  I keep forgetting the fact that this is MY blog so it goes however I want.  So I’m going to try to post more frequently, and I might have some in depth posts, and some completely random.

Anyhoo, I got a new snowboard and am super stoked on it.  Part of the perks of working for Quiksilver is that they own a good amount of companies and I can get discounts on awesome gear.

I got a Lib-Tech Attack Banana 159 and Gnu Park Bindings.  I also got some DC Boots, Quiksilver Snow Jacket, the works!

Here are some pictures of my setup.

Now, you might read this at first and think I’m ridiculous but give me a chance to explain myself.  I personally do not like it when people say “but it was all worth it”.

Whenever I hear someone saying the phrase above, it makes me think that they do not like doing what they are doing.  Like when you see a person working hard every single day and getting a good bonus and hearing them say “oh but it was all worth it!”  Would that mean that you wouldn’t work hard otherwise? Is hard work part of your DNA or is hard work only done when a goal or award is given?

For me, I try to work my ass off day in and day out.  Not with the intention of getting praise, financial bonuses, but for personal satisfaction.  Not to say it isn’t nice to get a raise, but that comes secondary.  People who know me in and out of work know that I am highly competitive and try to be “the best” at everything.  I know that I’m not the best at everything, but I will sure damn try my best to be.

People need to work for themselves and their own goals, whether it be a job or a hobby.  If you have a somebody who loves building remote controlled cars and he spends 10 years making one, he wouldn’t say “… but it was all worth it”. He would say “yea, it took 10 years and I loved every minute of it”.

I sometimes think about the job that I have, being able to do what I love doing.  I would never say though that my hard work “was all worth it” because quite frankly, it hasn’t been that hard!  Well, it’s been super difficult not gonna lie, but where some people see a long road of hard work and school, I see  a road full of fun, difficult challenges, and lots of self satisfaction.

Who likes things that are easy, anyways?

Everyone knows that I’m a HUGE apple fan. The passing of Steve Jobs today is most certainly a loss, but we must not take todays loss as if there will be some sort of delay in innovation.  It is up to us to keep moving forward.

Many thank Steve Jobs for coming out with awesome/cool products, from the Mac, iPhone, etc.. etc.. which is totally fine.

I personally would like to thank Steve for living the motto, “keep your head up”.

From starting Apple, getting fired from the company he built, coming back in and having Microsoft be your main competitor you’re up against, to eventually making Apple to be one of the top companies on the planet, that takes some serious madness.  Lets not forget he was the CEO of Pixar. (I LOVE Toy Story!)

Most would look at where they are today and evaluate themselves based on past experiences, not where they can be.  I’m inspired how Steve never settled for what he had, always went for what he wanted.

My personal favorite quote from Steve.

“[...]for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.’”

Let us all put the products aside and think about the values.  Let us think like Steve.

Let us think different.

Well, today is my 26th birthday, pretty stoked.  I’m not stoked in the sense where it’s my birthday, but I’m happy in the sense where I can look around and really appreciate what I have. I’ve been very fortunate growing up, to be surrounded by good parents and nice people and I can’t really ask for more.  I’m happy with what I have accomplished so far.

I’d like to take the moment and just thank everyone.

A lot of times when I’m poking around facebook or talking to other people, I’ll hear a girl rant and rave about how she got flowers sent to her “just because…”.  It’s supposed to be a special thing for a man to show a woman that they like her and appreciate them on random days, not just days of celebration.

One thing that I do not see however is someone giving their parents anything “just because”.  Sure we know our parents will say that us “just being there” is a gift, but a child should still show their parents how much they mean to them.  I guess somewhere along the path of being cared for and receiving gift after gift for birthdays and such, its hard to be on the other side of the table.  Especially when there is no holiday like a fathers day or mothers day (which I believe was created by Hallmark Cards)

Growing up our parents were always the financial backbone of our lives, and as we get older I feel as a whole we need to start showing the ones that really mean to us, how much they really mean to us.  Somehow this got lost in current society, and this only applies to girlfriend/boyfriend relationships (from what I’ve seen).  Sure they mean a lot to us now, but our parents (or other caretakers) have literally been there with us our entire lives.  This doesn’t mean a person should stop giving their partner gifts on random occasions, I just feel parents need to be added to the mix too.

Where am I going with this? Well, I’m not spoiling the surprise but I got something today that I think my parents will REALLY enjoy.

Just Because…

I’ll reveal it later.

Throughout my life, I’ve loved Adobe’s (err, Macromedias) Products.  I can remember back in 6th grade when I was first getting into web development that I had no idea what the difference between Shockwave and Flash was.  I had no idea how the web, which at the time was ancient as hell (see www.archive.org and see “big name” sites for yourself), could produce such an experience so visual, so entertaining that it made the web go from an informational piece to an experience.

I immediately learned Flash while I had just learned HTML but not yet javascript or anything crazy.  No, I wasn’t doing any Actionscript (I was only like 11 yrs old) but I was making flash intros, websites with fake content, adding in music, the works.  I remember back in ’99 working on a preloaded for like a month cause the web was so slow.  Flash for me at the time , was as fun as ever.  Although web development was my main focus, I still loved opening up flash and creating .swf files to put online for everyone to see.  I didn’t code anything in flash, only used the timeline and would make motion tweens and whatnot.

Sometime during the 2000′s I learned Web Development really well.  Actionscript (Flash’s language), which is a dialect of ECMAscript, came natural to me because I knew Javascript very well.  In 2006 I was a Flash Developer for The Walt Disney Company, working on their internal portal and doing some cool ass stuff.  Flash was awesome.

However I don’t know how everyone feels about this, but for me Flash came only natural to program and use because I was with it since the early days.  Talk to any programmer nowadays and ask em “how can I be a web developer?” and they will say. “oh boy…where do i even begin?”  I think it was a great accident that I learned flash as a pre-teenager, because it will forever be embedded in my bain.  It’s hard enough for a programmer to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP/ASP, and now Actionscript?

Many people see Flash as “bad” because “Apple won’t put it on their iPhone” or “it runs slowly on my computer”, but for me I have a problem not with flash, but with new technologies for the up and coming.

I’m a HUGE advocate of learning and teaching, however I feel there needs to be a fundamental backbone that EVERYONE must know.  Before in the earlier days it would be HTML.  Then CSS and Javascript.  Then you learn a server side language, say PHP or ASP.  And the list goes on.  Now you’ll see people are learning the “new generation stuff”, such as HTML5 and CSS3.

Adding in Flash Tweening, Animation, and Actionscript, is not on my list.

I want the web to look great and vibrant as ever (i’ll admit, even with intros!) but I don’t want it to come at the price of having visual animation only come from Flash developers. Why not just…developers?

You’ll usually overhear someone say, “well…if you want animation, we’ll have our Flash guy get on the job”.  Why is this the case?  Can the regular developer not do this?  Currently there is that notion because that is the case.  I know a PLETHORA of developers who can develop like all hell but when it comes to animation, don’t really know where to begin.  And I also know Flash developers who are great at Flash, but can’t program even the simplest code using OOP.

The fact of the matter is, as long as we have this separate divide between “types” of programmer, the web will not flourish into what it can be.

Right now, with HTML5/CSS3/Javascript, you don’t NEED Flash.  It’s just one more thing to learn.

And this is coming from one of the biggest Flash developers.  I just happen to like more the forward movement of the internet and web, most focus on growing technologies and less off competitors for no real competition benefit.

I still love flash and always will.

I just love a more a more focused web, one that is easier to learn for our future programmers and next generation developers.

Part of development that is fun yet tricky is developing for a global audience.  For dcshoes.com, we are having 1 single site address (www.dcshoes.com) that will act differently according to the location of the user (and language too, but I wont get into that).

At some point in time, a developer must deploy some code that will
1. Detect the users IP Address
2. Based on an IP table or related, determine the users current country

Now generally speaking, when you have a function of this nature, it will take in an IP and spit back out a 2 or 3 letter ISO country code.

During times when you want to “see how your site looks like from someone else”, usually you will put in a flag such as “?override_country=DE” if say, you want to be in Germany.  This is not a bad approach.

However for me, I like to actually a) test the Geo IP Detection is working and b) see if the appropriate action for the appropriate country is taking place

Below you will see a very dumbed down script of what I”m talking about.  Anyhoo, I think it could be helpful to some people if they need to spoof their IP and tell their code they have a different IP rather than having it detect theirs all the time.

if($_GET['user_override'] == 'yes'){
	$ip = "80.69.48.0"; //azerbaijan
	//$ip = "117.53.173.85"; // australian ip
	//$ip = "173.203.164.216"; // brazil
	//$ip = "78.138.5.104"; //botswana
	//$ip = "12.130.81.96"; //canada
	//$ip = "64.117.130.144"; //chile
	//$ip = "201.244.61.46"; //columbia
	//$ip = "31.201.155.0"; //france
	//$ip = "64.64.4.138"; //french guiana
	//$ip = "83.229.15.144"; //gabon
	//$ip = "80.153.148.252"; //germany
	//$ip = "46.183.16.0"; //greece
	//$ip = "31.11.32.0"; //italy
	//$ip = "14.137.224.0"; // japan
	//$ip = "63.250.179.112"; //mexico
	//$ip = "58.84.224.0"; // new zealand
	//$ip = "46.105.145.188"; //portugal
	//$ip = "46.19.224.192"; //serbia
	//$ip = "46.28.208.0"; //spain
	//$ip = "31.201.132.0"; //sweden
	//$ip = "202.72.104.0"; // timor-leste
	//$ip = "62.146.34.96"; //UAE
	//$ip = "67.52.123.30"; //united states
	//$ip = "46.136.34.0"; //vatican
}
else{
	$ip =  getRealIpAddr();
}

If you look at the code above, you will see it is super basic.  What it is doing is:

1. Check to see if there is a GET variable named ‘user_override’ and if the value of that is ‘yes’
- TRUE  - If it is set to use, then use one of the IP addresses below.  In our case, we are pretending to act like we are in Azerbaijan
- FALSE – If there is no “user_override” or if it is set to anything other than use, get the location based on the users IP (so if you’re in US, you’ll have a US IP)

The above IPs DO work and I have tested them with MaxMind GeoIP Detection.  I will add to the list as I add to my own list.

Enjoy.