This weekend has been an applelicious weekend! Today, Julie and I went to the Michigan Apple Festival to pick some apples, grab some donuts, guzzle cider, and savor an apple dumpling with ice cream. We then passed out on the couch/la-z boy. We picked some Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Macoum, and Jonagolds. I think if I were alive prior to the industrial revolution, I would have been an apple picker. I think it would be the funnest job ever - hunting for apples and reaching way up to get them.

One thing that’s always bothered me is when people pronounce “SQL” as “sequel.”  Where did this come from?  I prefer to spell it out and say “ess kew ell” and I think it probably annoys people who say “sequel.”  I was reading about a new technology called SPARQL, which Wikipedia says is pronounced, “sparkle.”  Then I got to thinking: wouldn’t it be more logical to pronounce SQL as “sickle?”

Now that school’s back in session, things have picked up. Now that I’ve finished a long-running PHP project, I’ve decided to delve into the world of Ruby on Rails. Yeah, I’m 2 years behind, but now I have plenty of time to do it since I’m home alone 3 nights out of the week while Julie’s at class. Last weekend I attended the Grand Rapids Ruby Users Group. It was nice to get together with people interested in new and better ways of development. It was very refreshing and I learned quite a bit. For now, I’m working on a pet web application using Rails and the Google Maps API. I decided to throw an app together that would let you quickly plan trips - sort of like Dopplr or Yahoo!’s trip planner, but more focused on a precise Itinerary and less on the social aspect.

The wonders of “Web 2.0” and AJAX design have brought us back to 1979. The innovations of WordPress/LiveJournal, Myspace and GMail - social networking, blogging, and flashy interfaces - have paved way for a new old way to manage your life. You can now send SMS text messages to web applications like Twitter, a site that was intended to be a “microblogging” network. Some inventive people have written programs that will respond to messages you type into Twitter and perform certain actions. For instance, I have my Twitter account hooked up to Remember The Milk. At any time I can send an SMS message to Remember the Milk, say, “meet Joe at 5pm tomorrow” and it will add that event to my calendar. It can even manage shopping lists. Another program offers budget management. So, every time you go to Starbucks, you can type in how much you spent on Lattes and keep a tight watch on how much money you’re throwing at Seattle. Yet another program allows you to keep track of gas mileage by entering your car’s current odometer reading, how much gas you just filled it with, and how much you paid. Over time it will chart out your car’s performance. If you have multiple cars it can even guess what car you entered mileage for based on typical mileage, so you don’t have to specify which car you filled up.

When I first got my cell phone a few months ago, I tried browsing to GMail since I finally had a phone that could handle it. While checking my mail, I noticed a link advertising their GMail app. I downloaded it and ran it. Very cool! It’s just like using GMail on your PC (well almost). You can easily access messages and do all the GMail things you can do with your PC. Sweet!

Don’t ever buy an HP printer.  Ever.