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Splash Mountain’s Origin

Mental floss has a pretty interesting piece on Song of the South, the Disney movie that the characters from the ride Splash Mountain originate in (as well as the song Zip-a-dee-do-dah). It’s truly an interesting situation: popular franchise characters in a movie that hasn’t ever been released on home video in the US for fairly obvious reasons. If you’re scratching your head going “I’ve never heard of that movie..” Take a read and think about how we sorta forget that things we still see evidence of today were interpreted differently 70 years ago.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/60021/10-zip-dee-doo-dah-facts-about-song-south

(PS: I’m composing this on my iPhone, and Autocorrect almost turned the title of this piece into Allah Mountain. How it got Allah from Splash, I have no idea!)

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How I Ended up Following a Makeup Blog

At Least thus far it is mostly about makeup, something I’ve never used. The reason it’s in my Blog Roll and my news feeds? Because a former student is writing it, and I generally encourage this whole blogging thing, despite the fact that I have a hard time motivating myself to blog (Fun Fact: JonWestfall.Com is now over 10 years old… Where did the time go?!?)

So if you’re into Makeup (with presumably more topics to follow), check out Maghen’s blog Lavender Lipstick. I know I’m going to follow so I can bust out random cosmetics knowledge and amaze/scare my female friends. And to support a fellow Blogger.

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Dear Apple: Who Designed THIS?!?

you only see the lock if you select at the top the network users or network group

I’m going to rant about an Apple Design decision, but it has nothing to do with any i-device of any kind. It’s purely around the Mac OS X Server 4.0 App that’s used to configure a Mac acting as a network server. The app’s never been that great, but this really steamed me. 

A bit of background: On a computer, you have user accounts. These users are considered “local” because they only exist on that computer. Servers can provide “network” accounts, which can be logged into from anywhere. Apple provides this through an open source implementation of LDAP named OpenLDAP. 

When you go to administer users, you find the following screen:

Looks pretty easy – I should be able to click on any of those users and reset their passwords. However clicking on any user (local or network) and selecting the box at the bottom shows a variety of options (like Change Password” Grayed out). Hmm…
So I did some digging around and found the link that I quoted at the top. Apparently by some divine force you should just know that if you select “Local Network Users” from the drop down at the top (instead of “All users”), a magic little lock will appear that lets you authenticate as a directory administrator (i.e. the person in charge of network user accounts) and THEN you can access those options.

Now I get that you can’t access those options before you authenticate – but geez Apple – could you give us a frickin’ hint? Maybe a box that says “Authentication Required”, or the lock icon is gray unless we select a network user? Something other than a magical appearing/disappearing lock!

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Never Got Game Programming? Check Out This Book!

This last spring and summer I was fortunate enough to work on a great project – I was the technical reviewer for a book by Arjan Egges – “Building JavaScript Games for Phones, Tablets, and Desktops”. As a programmer who never really “got” game programming, I was really excited to see how it was done with a language that I’m pretty familiar with. The examples throughout the book, and the finished demos that you create, are some of the most intricate and well planned apps I’ve seen come out of a “follow-along” type of book (Much better than my own!). If you’re thinking of jumping into game programming, want to develop something cross-platform, and know even the tiniest bit of JS, you’ll love working through the book.

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What Millennials Do and Don’t Do

Our generation is an anomaly. We refuse to do things their way, so they call us entitled. We refuse to sit in cubicles, so they call us spoiled. We refuse to follow their plans, so they call us stubborn. What they are slowly realizing, however, is we’re not lazy, stubborn or entitled. We just refuse to accept things as they’re given to us.

Ran across the quote above from a list entitled “50 Things About Millennials That Make Corporate America Sh*t Its Pants”, and while I don’t completely agree with the entire list, I think it makes some valid points. Often we evaluate that the current “young people” generation’s behavior by previous generation’s standards: If they look like they’re not working, then they’re not. They complain but ultimately will do nothing, when in reality they actually might. As someone who is “between” generations (1982, my birth year, is at the end of Gen X), I see a lot of my beliefs in this list, but also see the value in previous generation’s points of view. Yes, it may seem strange to wear a suit and tie (I don’t wear ties), but to previous generations this was the same status symbol message that newer generations crave by ditching them. In other words, your parents and grandparents wanted a job where a suit and tie were required because that meant they were doing well and making decisions that mattered. Today we want a job without one for the same reasons. 

Love or hate Millennials, but like every generation before them, they’re going to change the world. Perhaps not as radically as they (or others) think, but it’s each generation’s job to shake things up a bit!

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Common Sense and Apple Earpods

While I bought an iPhone 5 2 years ago when it was released, I only recently started using, and enjoying, the Apple Earpods that came with it. They’re decent low-cost headphones, and I like the volume rocker / built-in mic. What I was confused on, though, was the carrying case. Specifically, how to get those little pods back in properly. I watched a few YouTube videos, which basically started with “Put the headphone jack on the upper right, start winding around, and when you get to the control / earpods, lay them in…”
Ladies and Gentlemen, that is the worst suggestion I’ve ever seen. You always end up with slack cable, and never a perfect fit. Then tonight I ran across this article and realized… You can just put them in Pod First.
Basically start with the pods in their correct places, coil the cable around until you place the rocker switch in (Placing the other pod’s cable below it) and then wind it up. No excess slack. No problems. No time consuming “lining up”. And… it’s just common sense.
I’d love to say that it’s because I’m tired I never figured this out, but I’ve used these off and on for a few months now… and just never thought to do the winding in reverse!

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Is Blogo the New Windows Live Writer

Back in the day (“the day” being 5 years ago), I used to use Windows Live Writer to compose updates for my blog(s). Loved it. Then I switched to a Mac, and Microsoft more or less abandoned Windows Live Writer. Now I’m trying a new piece of desktop software for blogging named Blogo. We’ll see if this gets me writing more. No idea, but I suppose I will get at least 1 post out of my $14.99 investment: This one.

So far the interface looks pretty clean, and easy to use. I worry I might miss my thousands-of-customizable-widgets thing on my generic WordPress installation, but maybe ditching those is a good thing. This actually reminds me a lot of the WordPress app on iOS – simple, clean, easy to post. 

So perhaps a new chapter of blogging on JonWestfall.Com is upon us. Or more than likely, I’ll still stay busy, and forget to blog!

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