dclayton
Cards Against Humanity?
Do you play Cards Against Humanity? No? – you should! Best described as your strange uncles version of Apples to Apples, it is a must for tabletop gamers (as a bonus it’s open source). A great way to get to know your friends and family and a great addition to any party.
Here I present to you some additional black cards to add to your collection, created by and tested by yours truly (and a bunch of very strange friends). Famous Quotes, Music Lyrics and Movie Quotes – all under my personal banner – Citations Aggravate Humankind.
Do you have a great lyric, quote or line from a movie – send it in and may be added to a future edition!
Next Level Christmas Lights
For anyone that love Christmas lights, this takes choreographed lights to the next level.
26 Amusing Facts About Amusement Parks (Mental Floss)
A couple mistakes, can you spot them?
CSS Reference
Many, many moons ago, when CSS was a brand new toy for us developers to play with, I created a quick reference guide for my own use. It made its way into the wild, and many of my colleagues still thank me for creating it. It is long past time that I updated this handy reference.
So, about a month ago I dug out my reference and began the process of identifying what needed adding. The original document contained only the basic CSS properties, and had not been updated since CSS 2.0. No JavaScript equivalents; no color, no measurement nor selector reference; no CSS 3; and no browser support, all of which are now added [although CSS3 and Chrome information are incomplete].
I only mark support where it is complete, partial, or buggy support does not cut it. If we developers cannot reliably use the feature on that browser, I do not consider it supported. There are a few exceptions, all of which are noted.
Your input is greatly appreciated. Please send your additions and corrections with your source!
Development Anti-Patterns
Around 2006 a post appeared on a website that led to a discussion of development methodologies. The discussion quickly deteriorated into methodologies that should not be used, but were unfortunately all to common. This got our internal team discussing, and me compiling, the following strategies. Which ones does your team use? With thanks to the original thread which now seems to be unavailable.
Download Development Anti-Patterns (11×17) PDF
A**hole Driven Development (ADD)
Any team where the biggest jacka** makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the door when Mr. A is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway.
Cognitive Dissonance Development (CDD)
In any organization where there are two or more divergent beliefs on how software should be made. The tension between those beliefs, as it’s fought out in various meetings and individual decisions by players on both sides, defines the project more than any individual belief itself.
Ping Pong Development (PPD)
Two stakeholders with mutually exclusive requirements and visions, both of which constantly insist on there choice of features. Also related are Eternal PPD (EPPD), where the ping pong game is never ending due to the fact the opposing stakeholders will never agree on any feature that the software should have, but will not admit defeat and cancel the project either.
Decapitated Chicken Process (DCP)
A time honored micromanagement technique where each day managers identify a drastic emergency and require developers drop what they are doing (and whatever process they are using) and immediately attend to the latest conflagration. Since this does the double duty of creating new bugs and making other tasks fall behind, fires become easier and easier for managers to spot and freak out about. Also referred to as Everything is High Priority (EHP), What’s Today’s Emergency? (WTE), Put Out the Fire (POF) and Seagull Management (SM) “The seagull manager flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything then flies off again leaving a big mess behind.”
Cover Your Ass engineering (CYA)
The driving force behind most individual efforts is to make sure than when the shit hits the fan, they are not to blame. All complex, complicated, expensive, or otherwise troublesome decisions/features/issues are pushed off to someone else. Also referred to as Not My Problem (NMP), Hot Potato Development (HPD), and Musical Chairs Development (MCD).
Development By Denial (DBD)
Everybody pretends there is a method for what’s being done, and that things are going OK, when in reality, things are a mess and the process is on the floor. The worse things get, the more people depend on their denial of what’s really happening, or their isolation in their own small part of the project, to survive.
Get Me Promoted methodology (GMP)
Developers write code and create functionality to increase their visibility, satisfy their boss’s whims, and accelerate their path to a raise and/or the corner office — no matter how far outside of the stated goals their efforts go. This includes allowing disasters to happen so people can be heroes, writing hacks that look great in the short term but crumble after the individual has moved on, and focusing more on the surface of work than its value.
Worry About It Later (WAIL)
We all have done this at some time!
Temporarily Under Repair Development (TURD)
What the development engineers do when the site is down, and the sorry page is up.
All-But-Vacuum Management (ABVM)
Team members operate with no lead/ managerial feedback or processes – just rumor handed down – until project stagnation and butting-of-heads gives management enough one-sided whining to do something pointlessly drastic. This avoids having to deal with team members as humans, actually evaluate anyone’s performance, and define anybody’s role.
Shovel-Driven Development (SDD)
Get it out the door as quickly as possible, cut-n-paste from anything that you find that works. Maintainability and standards be damned. Closely related to Duct-tape Driven Design (DDD).
Idiot MBA Driven Development (IMBADD)
Development driven by someone who thinks they know everything, just be-cause they just graduated with an MBA.
Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Indians (TMC)
When you have multiple bosses, each trying to take the project in different directions.
Budget Driven Development (BDD)
The time that a project will take is dictated by how much the client will pay, instead of how long it will take to develop the application, generally leading to massively over-budget projects.
Over-engineered Über-specified Development (OÜD)
The majority of the development time is spent defining architecture, service interfaces, requirements, and other items. Copious amounts of inaccurate, verbose, self-contradicting and unnecessary documentation are prepared and maintained as if they somehow embody everything that needs to be done in development. A developer must implement the documentation down to typos and pixels in the user interface. Code that deviates from the specification is incorrect, even if it is how the product is intended to behave. No changes to code are allowed unless the document is revised, reviewed, submitted, approved, published and re-distributed. Also referred to as Document Driven Development (DDD).
Blame The Last Guy (BTLG)
Whatever the problem, whether it was your’s or not, blame it on the employees who used to work on the project, preferably one whom no longer works for the organization.
It’s What They Wanted Development (IWTWD)
Absolving oneself of all accountability by inventing a group of people known as “they” and blaming them for one’s own inability to design and develop a usable system.
Visibility Driven Development (VDD)
We’re selling the company, so the more times the not-really-ever-going-to-be-product squeaks, whistles, spins, churns, flashes, or wobbles, the better. If it “just works,” it makes us look like we kept all that money we said we put into R&D.
Not Knowing What You Want Until You See It (NKWYWUYSI)
Client or management know they want something, but they’re not quite sure what – so there is no design specification. What they want then gets poorly communicated down to the development team, who then produce their version of what they “think” management wants, and then the project enters the Never Ending Story Development (NESD) phase.
The Process Development (TPD)
When the process of the project becomes more important than the project itself. No work can be done without a TPS report. See Sigma Six for further details.
It’s Tuesday Development (ITD)
Feature freeze and requirement specifications? Hell no. Today we are changing the requirements to the degree we are now effectively working on a different project. Why? Because it’s Tuesday!
Must Use Specific Technology (MUST)
Someone (sometimes a reasonably smart and technically savvy engineer) dictates that the solution must use a specific technology “because it’s the future”. The technology ends up shoe-horned into places where it clearly doesn’t fit, or it’s too immature to use successfully and eventually everyone looks back and says: “why the hell did we do that?” Also known as The Square Peg in a Round Hole (SPRH) methodology and Nerd Driven Development (NDD).
Buzzword Driven Development (BDD)
Whatever is best for the project does not count; what counts is whatever is “hot” right now. Requires every new and fancy technology to be used within the project, just for the sake of it, whether it actually make sense or not.
Faith-Based Development (FBD)
Based on the premise that a developer is so good (read: cocky) at what he/she does that he need not test or ensure that anything works with existing components and checks in the code as-is.
FUD Development (FUDD)
Implementing the feature(s) the right way is huge, scary, time consuming and expensive in every way imaginable, therefore the other way (whatever it is) is the way it will be done.
No Customer Left Behind Development (NCLBD)
Every feature requested by the client, no matter how unrelated, trivial, esoteric, unusable or out-of-scope, must be included. Resulting in an over-budget, over-deadline, non-specified item the client will never pay for. Also referred to as Client Wants It anyway (CWI) and Out of Scope Development (OSD).
Completely Redundant Application Process (CRAP)
This is where you create the same application someone in your company, division, department, or cubicle has created because you had no idea someone else had already done it.
Dead Man Walking Development (DMWD)
Development teams working on a project with a visible executioners axe hovering just overhead. Also referred to as You’ll Be Gone, I’ll Be Gone (YBG IBG), and Irrelevant Development (And We Know It).
One Badass Development (OBD)
Near deadline time everyone goes to the one badass of the company for help. In the end, the badass finds that everything everyone else has done is crap and rebuilds the entire project by himself in a few days, without sleep. Hire several badasses, they’ll often quit when learning that this development process is in place.
Encoding Reference
I was recently doing some consulting for another IT company when the encoding of characters for HTML came up. Which is when I remembered a great reference document I created years ago, of which I would forward a copy. Which led to “why don’t I post it for all to use?”. So I present to you DerekClayton.com’s Encoding Reference.
Iconic Cincinnati Restaurants
After posting about the great Cincinnati area restaurants you were missing I received several inquiries from my friends out of town on which restaurants they should try when in town. There are so many to try, so this list is limited to those places that scream Cincinnati, and unless noted, have been around a while.
Note that in Ohio there is no smoking in any public place, but Kentucky has no anti-smoking laws (it is up to each restaurant).
In no particular order…
Izzy’s
Various locations (the original is downtown)
Izzy Kadetz himself would be proud of the local sandwich chain, now in it’s third generation. Go for lunch and try a Reuben accompanied by a potato pancake – under no circumstance are you to opt out of the thousand island or sour kraut on the sandwich or are you to leave off the pancake.
Montgomery Inn
Various locations (the original is in Montgomery, but the downtown location has spectacular views of the river).
Best ribs, ever. The barbecue sauce is a little on the sweet side, but the cuts are delicious, enormous and melt right off the bone into your mouth. The restaurants are covered with memorabilia from the various celebrities that have visited over the decades. Go for dinner and try the ribs (of course) with a side of saratoga chips.
White Castle
Various locations (the original vanished through a space rupture)
If you are from elsewhere in the mid-west you know of White Castles already, so move on. If you don’t, you are in for a unique hamburger treat. Known for their sliders – a small burger fried over onions – simple and effective. You must try a hamburger or cheeseburger (or four) – and if you are following Cincinnati tradition it should be very, very late at night.
Camp Washington Chili/Blue Ash Chili/Skyline/Gold Star, etc…
Camp Washington is in Camp Washington (just north of downtown)
Blue Ash Chili is in Blue Ash and Mason
Skyline and Gold Star are everywhere
One cannot come to Cincinnati and not try our cities official dish. Cincinnati chili is a bit different – first you will notice a hint of cinnamon and chocolate. Second, we serve it over spaghetti noodles with cheese – a three way! Or preferable go all the way and get a five way by adding beans and onions. You may also want to try the local version of a chili dog.
LaRosa’s
Various locations (the original is in Western Hills)
A long time staple in the Cincinnati area and the local favorite for pizza. Try the spaghetti, lasagna or if in the mood for pizza, a deep dish meat topper. I personally love the bread sticks with cheese and a garlic butter for dipping. Warning: if you are looking for gourmet pizza, or true Chicago or New York style pizza – this is not the place for you.
Graeters Ice Cream or Aglemesis Bros. Ice Cream
Graeters has various locations
Aglemesis Bros. is in Montgomery
Rich, creamy, hand made, fresh ingredients – do I need to say more? There are very few that still use the french-pot method (the small batches are very time consuming). The best ice cream anywhere. Try every ice cream flavor. Then do it again.
Dewey’s Pizza
Various locations (the original is on Madison)
This is now a national chain, but it started right here in Cincinnati less than a decade ago, so I’m calling it our newest icon. Known for their exquisite hand made gourmet pizzas. Start by splitting any salad among your group. Then try a half x-peperoni, half Edger Allen Poe.
Root Beer Stand
Sharonville only
A coney in Cincinnati will be topped by a unique Cincinnati recipe, but not here. Here you will get a authentic, delicious chili dog. So go get a foot long chili dog with everything and a mug or two of root beer. Did I mention they make their own root beer here fresh each day? The place and location are not much to look at (industrial area), but the great food and cheap prices make up for it.
Hofbrouhouse Newport
Newport only
Until recently this was the only Hofbrouhouse outside of Germany. Authentic German recipes and some with a local flavor (which has long been heavily German influenced anyway). Be warned, the food is almost all fried. They brew their own beers here, keeping strictly to the German purity laws. So go for dinner and order a pint of your favorite beer (as long as it’s not the light) and a appetizer sampler – then on to whatever else looks good on the menu.
What do you think?
When you come in town, let me know what you think. Those of you in Cincinnati, did I miss any icons?
Today in Amusement History
Many moons ago, there was The Amusement Park Almanac, compiled by Dave Althoff and published periodically on Usenet. Anyone out there remember, or even know what Usenet is, let alone use it? For the last few years it has laid fallow with no updates and for a time, no home. That is till I came along and revived the Almanac. After getting the OK and support from Mr. Althoff it is alive again, living on DerekClayton.com/tiah. Both of us are now maintaining the list, updating it for current events and slowly filling in the events that were missed over the last few years.
But it is no longer just a list – oh no indeed! First off, it is now in a true database. Secondly, it can now be viewed in many ways – via website, Yahoo Widgets. And if you have your own website, you can easily add it to your site (see the website for details).
Amusement history is an important part of American history, and Americana in general. Hopefully this will help keep it alive.
PS, if you need a Yahoo Widget, Google Gadget, etc… developed please let me know, I have your solution.
Overlooked Cincinnati Restaurants
There are a lot of great restaurants in the Greater Cincinnati area – a fact we should be thankful for. Many great places most of you already know, including chains like Dewey’s and local places like Montgomery Inn. Below are a few local (non-chain) eateries most of you have overlooked, and which all of you should take the time to check out.
Pit-To-Plate
The best barbecue (and sides) in Cincinnati, served southern style (your choice of sauces served on the side). Try the pork ribs, wings, or pulled pork to start. Also try Eli’s.
8021 Hamilton Ave.
Mt. Healthy, Ohio 45231 USA
513-931-9100
http://www.pittoplatebbq.com/
Camp Washington Chili
Why go to Skyline or Gold Star and eat canned chili? Go here and taste how fresh makes all the difference. And, if you don’t like Cincinnati chili, they have great sandwiches as well. Many a soul have been heard to rave over Camp Washington – but that don’t like Skyline. Also try Blue Ash Chili.
3005 Colerain Ave
Cincinnati, Ohio 45225 USA
513-541-0061
http://www.campwashingtonchili.com
Lemon Grass
Best Thai in town. If you love Chinese, give this a try – the dishes are familiar, with unique spices and flavor notes. Also try Sukhothai Thai Cuisine.
2666 Madison Rd
Cincinnati, Ohio 45208 USA
513-321-2882
Betta’s Italian Oven
Best Italian in Cincinnati. Wood fired pizza and great pasta – all home made fresh. Also try Ferarri’s Little Italy.
3764 Montgomery Rd
Norwood, Ohio 45212 USA
513-631-6836
Floyd’s
Mediterranean/Greek. Also try Andy’s.
127 Calhoun St
Cincinnati, Ohio 45219 USA
513-221-2434
The Amusement Industry is all aTwitter
Twitter? What is this Twitter I keep hearing about?
Twitter itself describes itself thus:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Wikipedia goes a little more in depth:
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
If you are already Twitter, continue reading, if not you may want to check out the Twitter site first.
Although Twitter has been around a couple years, 2009 has brought a huge explosion in use. Below is a list of Twitter users involved in the amusement industry. It is hard to keep up with all of the new accounts, so this list is as complete as it can be when this article was published. If you know of any Twitter accounts not listed below that should be, please let me know.
Parks/Attractions
| adventurepark | Adventure Park USA |
| alton_towers | Alton Towers |
| CanobieLakePark | Canobie Lake Park |
| carowinds | Carowinds |
| cedarpoint | Cedar Point |
| ColumbusZoo | Columbus Zoo |
| ConeyIslandFun | Coney Island |
| TheCyclone | Coney Island Cyclone |
| Darienlake | Darian Lake |
| Dollywood | Dollywood |
| Draytonmanor | Drayton Manor |
| funtownusa | Funtown Splashtown |
| GhostlyManor | Ghostly Manor |
| WonderlandPier | Gillian’s Wonderland Pier |
| HolidayWorld | Holiday World (the first park on Twitter) |
| KingsIslandPR | Kings Island |
| LaRondeSixFlags | La Ronde |
| LEGOLANDWindsor | Legoland |
| MagicSpringsFUN | Magic Springs |
| NavyPier | Navy Pier |
| OhioStateFair | Ohio State Fair |
| PaultonsPark | Paultons Park |
| beachboardwalk | Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk |
| santasvillage | Santa’s Village |
| RealShamu | Sea World |
| TheRealMrSix | Six Flags (Mr. Six) |
| SixFlagsMexico | Six Flags Mexico |
| SixFlagsOverGA | Six Flags Over Georgia |
| SplashinSafari | Splashing Safari |
| sftv | Six Flags TV |
| wdwnews | Walt Disney World News |
| Wild_Adventures | Wild Adventures |
Companies
| thegravitygroup | Gravity Group, The |
| GreatCoasters | Great Coasters International |
Organizations
| ACESOAR | ACE SOAR (Southern Ohio Area Region) |
| Darkride | Darkride and Funhouse Enthusiasts (DAFE) |
| IAAPA2009 | International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) |
| FlaCoasterClub | Florida Coaster Club |
Other
| TheDisneyBlog | Disney Blog, The |
| Disney_Tweets | Disney History and Walt’s Quotes delivered twice a day. |
| Attractions | Orlando Attractions Magazine |
| pointbuzz | Point Buzz |
| ThemePark | Theme Park Insider |
| ThemeParkReview | Theme Park Review |
| AmusementPark | Today in Amusement History |
| Roller_Coaster | Ultimate Rollercoaster.com |
| screamscape | Screamscape |
| DisneyD23 | D23: The Official Community for Disney Fans |
People
| RaptorGuy | Brian Neal (ACE Southern Ohio Representative) |
| DerekClayton | Derek Clayton (ACE Southern Ohio Webmaster) |
| DAFE_Rick | Rick Davis (DAFE President and Founder) |
| CPTony | Tony Clark (Cedar Point’s Interactive Marketing Manager) |
| SantaClausLand | Paula Werne (Holiday World Director of Public Relations) |
| SchlitterTweet | Jeffrey Siebert (Schlitterbahn’ Director of Corporate Communications) |
| Will_Koch | Will Koch (Holiday World CEO) |
Note: this article was cross-posted to the ACESOAR website.