dustinfluke.com

I did it.

I finally decided to ditch the django blog for now and really get something going on the easier WordPress. There’s a few reasons for this:

1. I don’t have a job right now, and I feel that I need to re-establish some form of communication with a lot of people, but primarily former co-workers, whom I miss talking with. This blog (and rss feeds) is a way to keep tabs on each other without hanging out in an IRC channel all day not using my time to the full capacity.
2. I want to use my time more wisely, and when I write, I tend to remember more. I’ll likely blog about things going on at a given point in time if nothing more than to remember more clearly what it is I intend to do.
3. I have some upcoming projects I’ve previously announced, but never had the time to work on. I’ve established some unwritten goals for these things, and getting the blog up is the first step to the completion of those projects. (Then blog about those goals to get them written down) I want to be able to communicate progress, and I feel this is a good way to do that.
4. Twitter is only 140 characters, and so with that and Facebook, I hope to gain a following of sorts for reinforcement, ideas, networking, etc. A blog is a great platform for sharing lenghthier items.
5. It’s about time. I’ve let this site stagnate and go stale for the last 3 years or so, letting indecision get in my way of getting any real progress done. (WP or Django) Doing some self analysis in this “time between opportunities” has allowed me to see that I developed some pretty crippling habits. If you really want to know what they are, Laura can tell you. All of the self realization I’ve talked with her about she’s reinforced with a kind “Yep!” and smile. I’m glad she listens to me, even when she wants to get back to reading her vampire books she’s hooked on at the moment.
6. I already had a ton of contnet on wordpress and didn’t feel like converting it. Sure, I could start writing everything in reStructured text to be fully mobile across various platforms, but the fact is I know wordpress pretty well, and don’t feel now is the time to dive into python or django.
7. Lastly, whether it helps or not, maybe someday someone will go through a time in their life where they question thier purpose in life, the direction they want to go, where they feel they should be, etc. as I feel I am right now. If I blog a bit about it, perhaps that will inspire that person to look deeper at things. It’s a journey, and one I’m not sure of the destination of. I just know I have a unique purpose, for God intended it, and I plan to discover what that is. It might happen in two minutes, two hours, two days, or two decades. I have no idea, but it’s an area of focus for me now. I hope that by sharing, I can help someone else. It’s really that simple.

What you’ll notice is I’m using a stock theme. I have some other ideas on paper that I’ll implement over time, but I feel that since I have the content from archive, I only wrote 6 entries last year on the django blog, and I’d rather focus on writing content and doing some planning for other things and finding a job, I’ll worry about look and feel at a later point in time. I realized it just wansn’t all super important to me right now.

I’ll also be adding other features like my flickr stream, tweets, project pages, and other things as time allows. I just know if I try to do everything at once, I’ll fail.

Time to do some site changing and get this back on the proper dustinfluke.com domain.

I’m busy. Every day I see things I’d love to blog about, comment on, etc. but they usually end up buried as a vague comment in twitter or perhaps a small flickr photo. I’m not sure what’s holding me back from finishing this blog up. I think part of it comes from a rearrangement of interests, from using a django powered blog to coffee roasting. I thought about moving back to wordpress, as it still exists, and copying and pasting my django blog entries wouldn’t be a big deal. So I’m thinking about it. Sure, wordpress is a pretty easy “plug-n-play” blog app with enough features. However, even utilizing Basic Apps blog app is so much more flexible long term, and I could integrate new apps that I have ideas for pretty easily. Perhaps the direction is to have a working blog on wordpress until I actually have django app related items to integrate into it, and build out the blog after I’ve had additional time to work with django. The template language is the easy part, thanks to Ellington and my job. I guess it’s the finding time part I struggle with the most. Time for some goal setting…

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about roasting coffee, coffee shops, selling coffee, designing a new coffee roasting apparatus for personal use, etc. etc. No – I’m not considering attempting such a venture, but I’m certainly thinking about it. If I could, I’d consider opening a coffee shop / roasterie, but I have little savings, no net worth/assets etc. So there’s no way. Besides, it’s just not the right time, and I have a pretty damn good job that I love (most of the time). Although it does keep me plenty busy, at least busy enough to avoid updating this site. I also have an awesome family that comes first.

While I’ve been thinking about all these things, two goals have come to mind.

1. I want to learn more about coffee roasting, so I’m going to need to do it more often.
2. I want to experiment with creating a fluid bed coffee roasting machine, so that may be a summer completion type project. (For now, the heat gun and bread machine setup will have to work.)
3. I want to establish relationships and face to face contacts for people already in the industry.
4. I want to share my knowledge in hopes of creating a network of people to share knowledge about various aspects of coffee.

I did some searching this evening and found quite a few nice websites devoted to such things. Why, while it’s a pretty stagnant group, I’ve been collecting resources via ma.gnolia on the home roasters group I started. While I will need to think about the direction I want to go with everything, I do want to do some coffee tasting/cupping sometime so I can refine my tastes in order to perfect my own blends.

All in all it’s a lot of stuff, but I’ve decided at certain times of the year, I’ll need to focus more intensely on my various hobbies, namely professional fireworks, coffee, and recently, Christmas light shows.
I’ve also gathered enough knowledge by working at Mediaphormedia about django and Ellington (the product I directly support) that I’ve decided it’s time to ditch Dreamhost (eventually) and have signed up for a Webfaction account.

I’m not really certain what I’m going to do, but I’ve got some ideas, most of which will likely come at the aid of the pros I work with. And most likely I’ll find some new domain name for my coffee ventures, or at least segregate it largely from my personal site, just because it’s more about providing a resource. I’ve seen a lot of coffee related resources out there, and most are largely un-eventful, stagnant, or just plain boring (hey wait, I just described this site). I feel that mixing something I’m really in to along with something else I’m very interested in, I’ll have a nice end result. I guess we’ll see.

So with that, I’m sure that over time I’ll begin to post more and more. I’ve already got some stale videos I’ve been waiting to edit. Here’s to having a nice vacation from work to accomplish some things next week!

Merry Christmas!

So I wanted to blog on this previously, but I’m just now getting around to it. That said, some time last week after a long evening out Laura and I decided we just didn’t want to make dinner. Chipotle was on the menu, but the kids don’t like it, so we decided on Taco Tico. It had been awhile and I felt the need to decrease my life by a couple of years. Aparenlty they have this special, and when ordering it caused some confusion:

Me: I’ll have a six pack of tacos and a combo burrito.

Tico Lady: It’s all about the Taste would you like buy one get one free on the combo burrito?

Me: Sure. Thanks.

Tico Lady: Do you want anything to drink?

Me: No thanks.

Tico Lady: Okay I’ve got a six pack of tacos and a combo burrito. It’s all about the Taste would you like to get a combo burrito free?

Me: Yes.

Tico Lady: It’s all about the Taste. You have to say it.

Me: (Like Jerry MacGuire) It’s all about the Taste!
At that point she gave me a total and I proceeded to the window, where I saw a sticker for the advertised special.

So, if you’re going to Taco Tico, make sure you know “it’s all about the taste” (and make sure your wife isn’t laughing uncontrollably at you.)

I’ve finally decided to purchase CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions by Andy Budd. The main reason for my purchase is due to the fact that I have a $25.00 Amazon certificate, thus making the book pretty much free. I was going to hold out for Pro CSS Techniques but decided that I’d really like to have both books, and since Pro CSS Techniques isn’t out until later this year. I’ll wait.
While perusing Andy’s web site today I saw a banner for the WebMaster Jam Session next month in Dallas, TX. I have family in Dallas, and I could possibly work something out for one night and stay the other night at the conference hotel (which means free membership to the first 1000). I’m not sure yet, it sounds good but it’ll cost some bucks. It looks really good, and could really get me pumped again for doing web design. As one can tell, this site here has been fairly stagnant. I posses a lack of motivation to do anything with it at the time. I’m instead doing other things, like trying to get a portfolio going and being crazy busy with my normal job and with the family. I’ve heard, “5% of something is better than 100% of nothing,”; and that’s the approach I plan to take on this site. I don’t know exactly when I’ll be done, as most of my redesign revolves around learning wordpress and how to re-do a template. With any luck, I’ll get another website that I’ve been trying to do work for, which will establish a routine for me to to have development time. Well, my somewhat allotted time for a break is over. Back to the ‘ol 8 to 5.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. To recap, here’s the events as of late:

Home Roasting

I recently discovered the joys of roasting your own coffee. I use a hot air popcorn popper and in five mintues I’ve got the best cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted – except for the time I under-roasted. Yuck! I’m just waiting on getting some more green beans so I can roast again. Fortunately, the Roasterie in KC has a bunch at a good price.

Vacation and Fireworks
I finally took some vacation in preparation for my fourth of July extravaganza. It was mostly fun. I spent way too much time building racks for my mortars. However, this is time I won’t have to spend next year because they’re good for years to come. All in all I made 4 15 shot angled racks. I’ll have some photos on flickr soon. I also shored up the deck that was about to fall off the side of our place. It was pretty scary. I don’t know who designed it, but they didn’t do a good job. I just wish I had the bucks to re-do it. Eventually I’ll do a large screened in poorch. Maybe in ten years.

The rest of my vacation was spent waiting on parts to arrive from Futurlec. Apparently one item was on back order and no one decided to e-mail me about the delay, so I got parts on July 3. There wasn’t enough time to spend on my firing system so I’ll have to complete it this summer. Yes I was bummed, but overall the hand fired show was awesome. All the neighbors seemed to really enjoy it. I’d like to think I established some sort of reputation around the area ;)

I did make a sketchy stickymatch machine but I already want to re-do it. It’s too messy and requires a little more work to get it to work, but at least I was able to stickymatch my fireworks. One nice thing about stickymatch is when you sandwhich 2 sets of 10′ long firework strings together and they both go off at once it makes one hell of a rush. I’m only sad I don’t have a video decoder card to upload it.

I learned my friend Don who was scheduled to shoot the Independence, KS fireworks show was in an accident. I don’t know what happended but news crews are reporting $11,000 of fireworks gone up in smoke as a result. One of the 4″ shells apparently went off unexpectidly. Fortunately, no one was hurt, so I look forward to getting together in November.

Company

Katie came down (or up rather) from Dodge City, where it must smell like cows all the time according to her. It was nice having someone around for Laura to hang out with becuase I was rather kept up with all the stuff I wanted to do for the big day.

In Conclusion

Overall, it’s been a nice month since I’ve last updated the site. I’m done with school for the summer so I look forward to slowly spending some time on the website. We’ll see.

Well, after a long weekend break I was looking forward to seeing my “new to me” Powerbook.

Now I’m not so sure. Hopefully everything is okay, but I’m just waiting for the phone call, “Sir, unfortunately your package was damaged during transit. It uh…got smashed by a train. Sorry.”
Who knows…

Well, I’m back online.

I figured I’d have a nice site layout and what not before all that happens, but it turns out things aren’t always working out that great. Besides, I’m too pumped about the upcoming 4th of July to think much about learning and theming wordpress. I’ll get something going I’m sure, but it’ll just take some time.

I’ll find some cool theme here shortly and read a liitle about customizing wordpress so I can make it suit me. If you’re reading this, you might have to update your blogroll / rss links and what not. I’m actually not really sure if you do or not, but I’ll find out once my new message is posted. I’m almost certiain you do.

Lastly, I got an apple macintosh G4 powerbook on the way to me. I’m planning on using it for development and what not so I’m sure that alone will spur some changes to the site. Cheers.