geek

Book Review: CSS Mastery

/ James Fitzsimons / Leave a comment

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As a web developer I’ve had to do a certain amount of CSS development over the years but never really felt like I understood it. CSS can be a bit of an esoteric beast and I wanted something to clear the fuzz away.

CSS Mastery was the solution I had been looking for. Andy Budd writes in a clear and engaging manner and the book is extremely readable for a technical text. Andy starts by getting right back to basics covering the Cascade and the Box model in the first two chapters.

The book covers most aspects of CSS with concise and easy to understand examples used through out. Andy also spends a good amount of time on cross browser compatibility issues where appropriate, as well as including a whole chapter of hints and hacks on this topic at the end.

If you are just starting out with CSS, or like me have used it for years but never really understood it at a visceral level then I urge you to give CSS Mastery a try.

Book Review: Iron Man: Extremis

/ James Fitzsimons / Leave a comment

This is the first Iron man comic I’ve read (Extremis is actually a 6 part series grouped into a single volume) but I absolutely loved it. I got inspired to give Iron man a go after seeing the recent movie which I also really enjoyed.

Extremis covers the genesis of the modern Iron Man character, although it is slightly different to the movie version. The comic doesn’t dwell on the back story but drip feeds the reader with a series of flashbacks. This makes it interesting without feeling contrived.

The artwork is simply excellent; the storyline is compelling and well written with the exception of a couple of pieces of weak and slightly mellow dramatic dialogue.

I particularly like the modern references to both technology (Bluetooth, WI-FI, 3G phones) and people (Dean Karmen, Edward Teller and Clive Sinclair). It helps to anchor the story in a contemporary setting and prevents the dated feeling you get from some comics (although that will go against it in years to come!).

All in all I really enjoyed Extremis and am looking forward to reading “Iron Man: Execute Program v. 2” next!

Who wouldn’t want to be Iron Man?

/ James Fitzsimons / Leave a comment

Or more specifically Tony Stark, I mean come on – the guy has everything a geek could dream of!

I saw the movie last night and although the super hero story and the wow factor of the suit definitely captured my imagination, my slightly geekier side couldn’t help but be almost equally impressed by stuff that would have slipped into the background for most of the audience.

Take Tony’s bachelor pad for example, how cool is that bedroom? Wake up in the morning and as you step out of bed, your room senses that you’re getting up and throws up the news, weather, your daily calendar on transparent screens built into massive windows while simultaneously filling you in verbally on the really important stuff – that’s cool. In fact, I thought it was so cool I did a little research thinking maybe there’s a fun project there, but alas it seems that transparent display technology is still a few years away yet.

But wait, what about that workshop? It was rammed full of enough hi-tech toys to make any geek wet their pants. A robotic arm that you can give verbal commands to – awesome. A holographic 3d modelling tool – yikes!

The really neat thing is that some of this stuff really isn’t that far off at all. Of course we are going to be waiting a wee while before we have a fully integrated AI in our homes…

Back from holiday and Go NASA!

/ James Fitzsimons / Leave a comment

Well, I have just returned from the most fantastic holiday in the Scottish highlands. If anyone is thinking of heading up there and doing a tour I can definitely recommend MacBackpackers and if you can get on a tour lead by Colin even better! I will try an get photos up on
https://www.jamesfitzsimons.com as soon as possible.

I have been following the Discovery return to flight mission with great interest. I have always been a bit of a space nut, but this mission really caught my attention partly because of the test flight nature of it I guess. I think NASA are absolutely fantastic and don’t get anywhere near the recognition or funding the deserve in spite of the rubbish the media would have you believe. To prove a point, here are a few interesting figures I found with a quick bit of googling:

2005 NASA budget $16.2 billion
2005 military budget $400.1 billion
Cost (to US) of war in Iraq $314 billion
US GDP 2005 $11,750 billion

So, NASA gets 0.14 % of the US GDP or put another way, 4% of what the US spends on it’s military.

Pretty sad.