I've had long hair for the better part of 15 years; it's been part of who I am for a long time. But, I decided I needed a change recently so I secretly scheduled an appointment with my stylist. I say secretly because I wanted to surprise my wife with the new cut. The four braids of hair I cut off were just long enough to send to Locks of Love, so they'll be mailed soon. To chronicle the experience I took before and after photos and shot some video. Click any photo thumbnail below to launch a fullscreen photo browser or play the time lapsed video. What do you think of the new "do?!" Note: All photos and video were edited using only Adobe CS4 products.

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Canon recently announced an issue with their Powershot G10 cameras where horizontal banding was found in some captured images. The service notice states occurrences of the problem are rare but I've found the flaws in several of my images (example below). Fortunately, Canon is offering to repair all affected cameras for free and they've made it pretty easy to determine if your G10 is one of them. Hit this link for all the details.

A second service notice was also announced but is much more difficult to replicate since it only occurs in RAW mode with the ISO set to 1600. This issue can be corrected on your own by loading new firmware but be sure and hit this link first to see if your G10 is affected.

Canon has sample images showing the flaws from the two service notices, but here's one of my images showing the horizotonal banding defect. Click the image to see a full screen version.



Thanks to Engadget for covering this issue.

It's been 9 years since I started using ColdFusion and 7 since I began serving the community as a member of Team Macromedia for ColdFusion, now the Adobe Community Expert program. After all these years programming in ColdFusion and being intimately involved in the CF community I've decided to hang up my hat and take down my Adobe Community Expert badge.

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I'm not a designer but I definitely consider myself a thinker, strategist, and decision maker. All of these roles have relevance in Scott Stevenson's blog post Measuring the Design Process. After posting a link to Scott's blog post on FriendFeed Deke Smith and I started discussing our thoughts in Facebook comments. The discussion got interesting so I decided to move it here in case others want to chime in. Here's where we are so far, feel free to post your own thoughts in the comments.

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RIAdventure 2009 has been over for a few weeks now and I'm missing the sun and relaxation already. It was great to get away from the office and shut off the phone and laptops for a full five days. I enjoyed hanging out with those that came along and I want to give HUGE props to Joshua Cyr for arranging the trip. He was like a travel guide making sure everyone knew what was going on, where we were supposed to meet to not miss the shuttle ride to the ship and as always was a joy to hang out with. I'm definitely looking forward to the possibility of a second RIAdventure in 2010 but in the meantime I have some photos to help make the weight a little more bearable.

For those curious what RIAdventure was all about you can view all the Flickr group photos here. I've also posted my photos to Flickr as well as three videos (of a super awesome Segway tour!) in my RIAdventure Cruise 2009 set.

Here's a slideshow for those that don't want to manually click through photos on Flickr.

Here's a really useful trick I just learned from the latest episode of TWiT. Load Google's search page in your browser (or if you're a keyboard jockey like me, use LaunchBar to conduct the search) and type "current time." You'll be presented with information similar to the following screenshot though targeted to where you are. In all of Google's limitless knowledge they're able to tell you the current time (localized) as well the time in major metropolitan areas near you. Awesomeness.

I'm sitting in the Miami International airport with my wife, relaxing a bit after a fantastic RIAdventure cruise and waiting on our flight back to Nashville. I've also started the process of wading through nearly 1,000 e-mails and one in particular jumped out at me, a "welcome back" e-mail regarding the Adobe Community Experts program.

I'm really excited to begin my seventh year in this program (formerly Team Macromedia) and I want to thank Adobe, Rachel Luxemburg, Stacy Sisson, Ted Patrick, John Koch, and John Dowdell for allowing me to continue serving the community. The last six years have been amazing and I firmly believe this year will be no exception!

For more information on the Adobe Community Experts program click here. Or, if you want more info on the Adobe User Group program, click here.

My wife does most of our banking so I rarely have the need to visit our bank. But, I had a check I needed to deposit so I went by Suntrust on my way into the office yesterday. I was really surprised to be greeted by a boarded up customer service window and a small screen with a camera.

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It's not every day I come across a record that blends everything I desire in music into a synergistic presentation of perfection. Matter of fact, it only happens about every other year or so. The last time it happened was when I discovered How To Save a Life by The Fray (on iTunes, on Amazon). Yesterday, it happened again. I was working on a blog post and wanted some background music, so I headed over to iTunes to preview some tracks. I clicked around for 10 minutes or so and stumbled across the self-titled album by Thriving Ivory (on iTunes, on Amazon). After previewing the 30 second snippets of three tracks I was sold. I purchased the record for $5.99 and began the auditory journey of listening to each track. I was positively stunned.

Thriving Ivory began when singer Clayton Stroope and songwriter/piano player Scott Jason met while attending the University of California in Santa Barbara, CA. The duo later added three band members to solidify a quintet that took the college scene in Santa Barbara by storm. The band soon relocated to San Francisco where they continued to build their fan base and experience success.

In 2008 their United States exposure skyrocketed with increased radio play and over a million hits to their MySpace page. In fact, Angels on the Moon - the second track on their album - made it into the Top 30. What drew me in were Clayton Stroope's raw, unrelenting vocals. He sounds just as good during a hard-thumping rock riff as he does on the quietest ballad. And when you think you've heard all Stroope has to offer, the songs reveal a depth as surprising as it is pleasurable. The band manages to evoke just about every possible emotion from the listener. Scott Jason's enchanting piano draws you in where the drums and guitar build a perfect climax to Stroope's trembling vocals. Several of the bands songs have received acclaim including Angels on the Moon, and Twilight. The Los Angeles Symphony's string section even makes an appearance on Hey Lady, a track about the realities of love. Scott Jason describes Hey Lady as:

I think everybody has their own Hey Lady. You know, anybody whose ever jumped into the crazy sea of relationships and had to deal with the fact that they're attracted to the fantasy of what they don't have. And when they get it it's not so interesting as it was before they had it.

It's hard to find a favorite song on this record. Every one stands on it's own and yet becomes something more when heard as part of the entire album. I've been listening constantly for two days and am still hearing new things each time through. I've enjoyed it so much I want to let others in on the experience. I've loaded up my MP3 player with full versions of the tracks so you can check 'em out and hopefully buy the album for yourself. Simply click here to have a listen.

I've been using GPS devices in one way or another for several years but I've never owned one. Most of the ones I've used have come with car rentals or have belonged to friends. I've been thinking of buying my own for at least a year or two but have always managed to talk myself out of it. This year though, my wife and I decided to get one. As always I did a ton of research weighing desired features against available units and there pricing. I decided to get the Garmin Nuvi 760. What follows is a short list of the features I really like after having used my Nuvi for over a month. This list is by no means a comprehensive list of features and is in no particular order.

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This time next week my wife and I will be somewhere in the North Atlantic on our way to the Bahamas. It's been a couple of years since our last cruise so we're pretty excited for the chance to hit the seas again. The particular cruise we're going on is part of the RIAdventure social/tech gathering. I've always enjoyed hanging out with other programmers and tech folks at conferences, but the conference always occupies most of our time. This cruise is all about the social aspects but I'm sure there will be loads of conversations on ColdFusion, Flex, AIR, and rich Internet applications in general. When you get a bunch of geeks together you can be there will be lots of tech talk.

I believe there are upwards of 30 people going including Joshua Cyr, Dan Skaggs, Dan Wilson, Yancy Wharton, Jared Rypka-Hauer, and Todd Sharp. Since I'll be arriving a day before the ship sets sail, I thought it'd be nice to have dinner with anyone else that's already in Miami. If you're going to be in Miami on Sunday the 8th and you want to have dinner, give me a ring (just press the "Call Me" button in the right margin). Or, you can always leave a comment on this post or e-mail me.

I'm attending the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) conference for the third time this year. Dealerskins has had a booth at NADA since before I started with the company and I've been able to work the booth three out of five NADAs over the years. This years conference is in New Orleans. I've only been to New Orleans once (Macromedia MAX conference, 2004) so it'll be good to go back and see the city again. I'm looking forward to talking with current and potential customers and getting to see all my colleagues from Dominion Enterprises. I'm also looking forward to showing off the results of all the hard work my team has been putting in over the last 12 months. We have some really awesome things to share that will energize current customers and entice new ones. If anyone is going to be at the conference, we'll be in Hall B, at booth #1021.

I'm gathering a few essentials this morning and packing my bags for an afternoon flight. I'll be in town from tonight until Monday morning. If anyone in the area wants to meet up leave a comment here, call my cell (you can call right from this page using the widget to the right), or hit me up on Twitter.

I posted a question to Twitter last week wondering if anyone knew of a site that would tell me how many tweets I post a day on average. Within minutes Andy Matthews (his site, his Twitter) recommended TweetStats. It took about 20 minutes for TweetStats to churn through my nearly 5,000 tweets and produce a graphical analysis of my activity. Since May of 2007 I've posted an average of 8.7 tweets a day, a number that seems kind of low to me. Perhaps more interesting than that are my lowest month of tweets - 55 in May 2007 and my highest month - 483 in May 2008.

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It's been several days since my Macbook Pro had coffee spilled on it and I still don't know how bad the damage is. I opened a service ticket with Mac Authority on Tuesday (January 6) and dropped off my laptop on Thursday evening.

I called Mac Authority Friday afternoon and the service guy (Tony) said there were 16 machines in front of me in the queue. He mentioned something about this being the busiest time they've ever seen in the service department. I asked him how long he thought it'd take to churn threw the queue and he said they might be able to get to my machine by Friday afternoon or evening.

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