Brian Wendt

____ Hunt

2011-12-21T12:11:00.000-08:00

Salem, Massachusetts
1692 - 1693

Those accused of witchcraft were normally refused due process and when given a chance to stand in court did not receive a fare trial.

Nazi Germany
1933 – 1945

People accused of being a Jew, Gypsy, Marxist, Homosexuals, and family history of hereditary diseases were given no trial.

United States
1947 - 1957

The Red Scare ruined the lives of those suspected or alleged of being a communist. Trials that were held are now viewed as being highly corrupt.

Global
2001 - present

The War on Terror has resulted in countless deaths of those accused and suspected of terrorism, their families, and people around them. Very few trials have been held for those accused, human rights have been denied, and the civil rights of all Americans and dozens of other nations have been taken away.

Holiday Gas Prices

2011-12-16T15:42:00.000-08:00

So you may have noticed that gas prices jumped 3-7 cents across the grid. The jump is a normal pricing reaction to the demand of the holiday travelers. Happens every year and will happen for the next forseeable future holidays, until petrol isn't needed to go see grandma.

Prices are likely not to come back down noticeably until after New Years. The highest prices will be the Fridays before the holidays and the weekend of.

Tip: top off your tank Wednesday or Thursday if you'll need gas for the weekend.

Jesus asked "do you Agapao me?"

2011-11-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

Agapaō: - (Greek) to love someone as you love yourself, unconditional, Godly
Phileō: - (Greek) a human response to something that is found to be delightful. Also known as "brotherly love"

Joh 21:15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest (agapaō) thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love (phileō) thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.
Joh 21:16 He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest (agapaō) thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love (phileō) thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
Joh 21:17 He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest (phileō) thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest (phileō) thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love (phileō) thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

For King James Version bible with the original language (Greek & Hebrew) included, download e-Sword for free.

Phoenix New Times So Far

2011-09-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

Screen shot from PhoenixNewTimes.com 09/08/11

As you may know I'm a web developer at Phoenix New Times, a free paper public weekly. Many people know the Phoenix New Times as sometimes being a "weird", counter culture source of news. I gotta say, I agree, and the office is just as weird and counter cultural.

The uniqueness of the writers brings a diverse perspective to the publications, likewise the development team's wide range of experience and skills is the driving force behind the productivity of the department. In six weeks, products can go from concepts in discussion to published and receiving traffic.

My role with Phoenix New Times and the 12 sister papers often is simply adding an element here, tweaking a cUrl there, or solving bugs. Sometimes I get the privilege of really taking a large role in a project and take it from start to finish in development. I love when that happens.

Screen Shot from my MyVoiceNation.com followers page

The screenshot [right] is of the latest Village Voice Media product, My Voice Nation (MVN). MVN acts as the social network for all of the 13 paper sites. Whenever a user signs up for newsletters or VoicePlaces.com to write a review, their account is created in MVN. Users will be able to see other user's activities, follow user's, and be followed. Activities earn the user points, points earn ranks, ranks earn... something that I don't know about. Activities include: writing a review, liking a location, liking a review, uploading photos, and more to come.

The thing I like about MVN the most, I've developed much of the interface and features including the "Activity" page and the feed behind it, the entire "Follow" system, "Profile Info", "Privacy Settings", "Newsletters", and "Mobile Alerts" pages. I've really enjoyed seeing this project move along, especially at the pace it has.

At-last!

2011-02-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

PhoenixHookah.com published (again)

The first release of PhoenixHookah.com was using the Wordpress platform which limited the site's capability. I went back and rebuilt and redesigned all custom.

I'm reading the bible in a year

2010-10-29T08:50:00.001-07:00

I joined a emailing program to read the bible in a year. Each day they
send you a few chapters to read directly to your email. It's a quick,
easy way to help you set and meet your goal.
www.bibleinayear.org
I'm on day 2

New CPR guidlines

2010-10-14T08:18:00.001-07:00

TIM finnegans

2010-10-13T20:07:00.001-07:00

Happy b-day James. We're out to eat in celebration.

JQuery and Special Characters

2010-05-27T14:22:00.000-07:00

For developers, anytime a user is able to insert text, you have to keep in mind that there is the chance the user could be copy/pasting from Microsoft word. Most developers use

<?php header("Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8"); ?>

(Or equivalent for their language) and

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

for their output and for MySQL use UTF8_general_ci Collation. For the most part, if you work with those steps you will make it out alive without a headache either.
Last night, I encountered an issue that just boggled me for hours. I'm using JQuery to not only spiffy up the content but submit form data inline like Facebook & Twitter had made famous to the general population. All was well until the inevitable occurred, the client posted content he wrote in MS Word. No problem normally, but this time it kept going into the MySQl table garbled. At first I figured I needed to decode the output but that wasn't it... the special characters where changed into "ã" which still doesn't make since to me. I stabbed at the problem for about 3 hours before I came to the conclusion finally that the data I was receiving from the form was garbage before PHP got hold of it. Tinkering around, I ran the input's value through encodeURI() and decoded the POST data and viola! Here is an sample of what I did:
JQuery

$save.click(function(){
 $.post('saveText.php',{ text : encodeURI($text.val()) } );
});

saveText.php

...
 $text = urldecode($_POST['text']);
...

New Viruses 101

2010-02-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

This is a quick lesson in some of the new threats going around.
I use the word "virus" loosely, much of it is actually general "malware" which includes spyware. Most of the new threats going around present themselves as being a anti-spyware program that has found some absurd amount of threats on your computer and they want you to purchase there software's full version in order to remove the threats. These programs are also called "Blackmail-Ware".
Here is a guide to what you should do if you get one:

Identify that you have one of these new viruses. If anything but your installed anti-virus software pops up saying you have viruses. This includes "Windows Security Alert" telling you that you have infections.

Unplug internet activity from your computer. This will prevent the virus from talking to it's buddies or pulling up porn sites.

Turn off your computer. This will prevent the virus from spreading... they commonly do get worse as they sit around.

Contact your nerd. You all have one, if not, than you don't realize who's not you are reading now!

If you are your nerd, here's some tips
- These new malware programs are good at keeping you from running programs to kill them, you'll need to run rKill (find through google) but only in early stages of the infection and it needs to be ran as soon as windows will let you run it (while startup programs are still initializing).
- MalwareBytes is the toughest anti-walware you have in your free arsenal. The new viruses and spyware will try stopping you from running it though, that's where rKill comes in.
- SuperAntiSpyware is also handy for some versions out there.
- Tip: you won't be able to download these from the infected computer, so get them onto a flash drive.