Blog archive — posts from Ben Christen, 2005–2009.https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/note-pass-available-in-the-appstore/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/note-pass-available-in-the-appstore/My first iPhone application, Note Pass, is available in the iTunes App Store. It is a very, very basic application, about 5 lines of code, that was inspired by Quicksilver’s Large Type feature. All it does is show whatever you type in large, white text on a black background.…Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/reminderss-alpha-is-live/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/reminderss-alpha-is-live/Announcing: reminderss - retro browsing for the rss reader era!Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTgeneralrubyhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/javaone-2006/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/javaone-2006/I'm at JavaOne (my first, wooo!) and blogging about it on java.net here.Fri, 19 May 2006 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/macbook-13-black-i-want-it/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/macbook-13-black-i-want-it/I'm lusting for the new MacBook. Perfect size for traveling and easily powerful enough to hack away on some RoR (rails), Java and Cocoa (really fun, I've heard). I've been envying all the mac laptops at tech conferences and this may be the right entry point for me. When the…Fri, 19 May 2006 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/google-toolbar-for-firefox-20-beta/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/google-toolbar-for-firefox-20-beta/Google Toolbar for FirefoxThu, 06 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/sxsw-is-a-blast/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/sxsw-is-a-blast/[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/benchristen/111187356/ "photo sharing") throwing the ajax gang sign with the ajax godfather Originally uploaded by benchristen.Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/i-have-no-idea-what-to-present-at-barcampla/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/i-have-no-idea-what-to-present-at-barcampla/None. Well, some, but I don't think they're all that exciting. Maybe I can talk about GTD (and my text file/svn system). I had thought to talk about how to name your applications, but then someone went a did a blog on the same topic (qwerky). Hopefully I can just show up and be…Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/best-domain-search-so-far/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/best-domain-search-so-far/Real-time Domain Search is my favorite domain search site/util. Simple, real-time, ajaxed (fast) and a direct link to purchase the domain on godaddy -- awesome. They only search .com and .net, but, that's probably all you want anyway. The next question is, what other domains…Sun, 22 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/networking-dos-and-donts/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/networking-dos-and-donts/Do: Flattery. We all LOVE to hear about how great we are, especially when it's sincere.Sun, 22 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/what-to-do-when-you-run-out-of-internet/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/what-to-do-when-you-run-out-of-internet/This happens (surprisingly) quite a bit (and I know it happens to some of my friends too). What do you do when you've run out of Internet? I've read all my rss (bloglines) feeds, checked in on my fantasy sports teams, browsed flickr (no new pics from friends), browsed upcoming…Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/learning-ruby/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/learning-ruby/I'm learning Ruby! It's fun to do simple things in a new (for me) language. Hello worlds are always fun. Here's what I just did!Sun, 04 Dec 2005 00:00:00 GMTrubyhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/lazy-explanation-of-blogging/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/lazy-explanation-of-blogging/I get asked about blogging quite a bit. i.e. What is blogging? How do I get started?Fri, 02 Dec 2005 00:00:00 GMTblogginghttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/blogging-roller-roller-20-ships/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/blogging-roller-roller-20-ships/Blogging Roller: Roller 2.0 ships!Fri, 25 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMTblogginghttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/five-years/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/five-years/Today is my five-year anniversary at my current job. w00000t!Sun, 20 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/ownership/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/ownership/Let's say you work at Ford or some major auto manufacturer. You bust your ass designing and building (yeah, I know they're not hand-built, work with me here) dozens of car models or maybe you work specifically on some internal aspect, maybe the engine itself. And, you are…Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/wow-ruby-on-rails/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/wow-ruby-on-rails/rails\take2\with\sound.mov (video/quicktime Object)Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMTrubyhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/and-then-there-were-three-news-readers/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/and-then-there-were-three-news-readers/It all started with Sage. That was when I really grasped the awesome power of rss (and by rss I mean all syndication formats, atom, etc.). It changed my life. I could now keep track of an exponential number of sites and be up-to-date on so many news sources. Life was great.…Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/technical-interview-resources/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/technical-interview-resources/Here are some resources I highly recommend if you're in a position to be interviewing candidates for engineering positions. Hiring Technical People is a great blog precisely about this topic. Subscribe to it. Also, read Joel's post, The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing. These two…Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/yahoo-hollywood/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/yahoo-hollywood/Interesting, I saw this on Ken Norton's blog - This is what being a "media company" means? He comments on this LA Times article, among others commenting on Yahoo! dealing with a Hollywood/Silicon Valley culture clash -- mainly manifested in the big egos of hollywood execs. It's…Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/delicious-help-and-new-features/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/delicious-help-and-new-features/Awesome! Check out the new help page on del.icio.us. They also added easy and configurable tagrolls and linkrolls (so you can easily have your links or tags on your blog, etc.). Check mine out. del.icio.us ru|3z!Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/google-analytics/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/google-analytics/Awesome! Google Analytics. Just the other day Shadow was telling me about how awesome Urchin is for site analytics and we were hoping that dreamhost would consider setting it up for shared hosting. Well, no need for that now! (Google bought Urchin and now offers the services for…Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMTblogginghttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/kareem-mayan-newsvine-and-how-big-companies-can-innovate/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/kareem-mayan-newsvine-and-how-big-companies-can-innovate/Newsvine and How Big Companies Can InnovateSat, 12 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/p4-obliterate-y/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/p4-obliterate-y/What a great command name. And, tonight is the first time I've used it in a place where things could actually go wrong if I mistyped something. -- Majorly wrong. p4 obliterate is the command in Perforce to completely remove a source tree -- it removes all traces of its…Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/first-spam-comment/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/first-spam-comment/Sweet, I just got my first spam comment. Someone was trying to sell their company's product as an alternative to another product I recommended. I feel like my blog is all grown up! (well, at least able to get into bars now, not all grown up) I don't have nearly enough readers to…Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMTblogginghttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/what-i-need-as-a-corporate-software-developer/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/what-i-need-as-a-corporate-software-developer/After the events and frustrations of the day and comparing that with the ideal . . . Creating Passionate Users . . . here's a list of what I need as a developer (as of this moment):Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMThttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/google-local-for-mobile/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/google-local-for-mobile/Awesome! It's like having a GPS Nav system on my phone! Fantastic use of Java on a mobile device.Tue, 08 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMTjavahttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/new-blog-strategy/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/new-blog-strategy/I'm moving from roller@jroller onto a personal install of WordPress.Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:00:00 GMTblogginghttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/content-mandate/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/content-mandate/My content mandate -Thu, 18 Aug 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/joel-on-software-hitting-the-high-notes/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/joel-on-software-hitting-the-high-notes/I've been reading Joel On Software for a while now, and loving it. However, I enjoyed this post more than usual and I just can't quell the urge to blog about it. It's just a great essay getting to the point of passion and the importance of design and quality in software…Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/kol-rulz/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/kol-rulz/So, my latest addiction (don't worry flickr, there's room for multiple addictions in my online life) is Kingdom of Loathing.Sat, 16 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/let-me-just-take-a-moment-to-say-how-awesome-subversion-is/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/let-me-just-take-a-moment-to-say-how-awesome-subversion-is/Maybe it's because I've mostly used VSS in the past, but SVN is just so easy and awesome. It was a breeze to setup and also get svnserve running, and now by using TortoiseSVN everything is just a right-click away from a commit, add, delete, etc. I've just yet to find anything…Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/the-ajax-gang-sign/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/the-ajax-gang-sign/| [](http://www.flickr.com/photos/benchristen/7760071/) | To be thrown asynchronously! Let all the geek-gangstas at your office know how you roll! Uploaded 28 Mar '05, 9.47pm PST by benchristen. | | --- | --- |Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/old-websites-never-die/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/old-websites-never-die/. . . they just get cached.Thu, 17 Mar 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/my-strengths/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/my-strengths/Last weekend I read the book "Now, Discover Your Strengths" and took the online test to discover my Strengths. The results were very accurate and I'm quite excited by them! It's great to see verification of what I'd maybe guessed to be true. And, good news, I think my strengths…Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/jax-rpc-saaj-memory-leak-jwsdp-14/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/jax-rpc-saaj-memory-leak-jwsdp-14/I have identified what I think is a memory leak in the JWSDP 1.4, the SOAP client implementation that I am using in an application at work. Doing a test of just repeatedly calling one method that makes a simple call to the server, I am able to see with OptimizeIt that over…Wed, 23 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMTjavahttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/tivo-hme-sdk-and-wheres-my-tivotogo/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/tivo-hme-sdk-and-wheres-my-tivotogo/I am eagerly awaiting TivoToGo to be rolled out to my box. I signed up on the priority list a while back, but no updates yet! I even ordered a DVD burner drive for my PC!Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMTjavahttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/the-curse-of-innovation/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/the-curse-of-innovation/Great! You've created a new, cool application that enables your team to do X! Everyone loves you for about a day, but then things change. Now you have to support it. Now you have to perform upgrades. Now you have to appease people who are complaining that X takes too long (even…Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/playing-with-blogshares/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/playing-with-blogshares/just starting out with blogshares, and claiming my blog Listed on BlogSharesFri, 14 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/why-blogging-is-better-than-personal-websites-of-the-90s/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/why-blogging-is-better-than-personal-websites-of-the-90s/I was talking with a friend about my new found interests in blogging and they compared blogging to the early web filled with arcane personal web pages. Well, I feel that there are certainly similarities (random people posting about random things, most of which, no one cares…Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTblogginghttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/aggregate-comment-view-in-roller/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/aggregate-comment-view-in-roller/New features for Roller -- Group blogging would be great, especially in corporate/work environments where you might have a blog per project. A work around we have used, is enabling a view of posts by all users to a certain category. So, everyone would create a category for that…Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/roller-with-ms-sql-2k-microsoft-sql-database/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/roller-with-ms-sql-2k-microsoft-sql-database/At work we are using Roller for our internal blogging server. When doing the install, I opted to use MS SQL 2k as the database instead of HSQLDB or MySQL because that's what we use here. In order to get Roller up and running, I had to make some changes.Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneralhttps://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/statcountercom/https://benjaminchristen.pages.dev/posts/statcountercom/I‘ve just started using StatCounter.com. At first use, it‘s great! I‘ve added tracking now to most of my personal sites. The use of the service is free (you have option to upgrade and give them money if you‘d like (and, if I continue to be pleased with the site, I just might)).…Tue, 04 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTgeneral