http://www.janisb.com/blog The World Through the Eyes of John Brennan Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:22:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en San Francisco was great! I got to take part in a great conference, network with other people facing similar challenges and catch up with some of my old friends in the area. It's amazing how many people are doing "startups" in that area. I put startups in quotes though ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/06/velocity-conf-my-takeaways/ I'm currently attending the O'Reilly Conference, Velocity Web Performance and Operations. It's the first of its kind, focusing on building web applications that scale. My focus for the conference is to build on top of what I already know and dive deeper into performance best practice, database tuning, ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/06/velocity-conf-day-1/ Judaism's spiritual side I had envisioned Israel being a completely adventuresome journey. At work I was asked if I was going for spiritual reasons to which I quickly replied, "No." Of course if that were true I wouldn't be writing this piece, would I? I, like most children born into ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/05/give-and-you-shall-receive/ I honestly don't even know where to begin. Throughout this trip I took notes of my thoughts and experiences so that this moment would be easy. Since I was not able to write on this blog during the trip I am forced to back date my posts. I shouldn't say ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/05/walls-divide-us-all/ I'm not sure what to expect. Actually, when I really think about it, this is the first time that I will be traveling without any expectations. Before heading to Europe, I had several pictures of what it would be like before I got there. Whether from movies, ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/05/my-trip-to-the-middle-east/ In the last investment post I wrote a checklist to stock investing. I described how I do my homework to see if there are growth prospects for a particular stock in the future. Once the answer to that question is yes, the next thing I look at is ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/05/the-company-is-healthy-but-is-the-stock-overpriced/ I was deeply touched by the talk from Jehane Noujaim, a filmmaker and winner of the 2006 TED Prize, who created a documentary about Al Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war. It is interesting to see, first hand, the perspectives of those on the other side of the ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/05/bringing-the-world-together-through-the-power-of-film/ From Pangea Day, May 10, 2008: Pangea Day was a celebration of the power of film. It featured films that were funny, sad, gorgeous, stark – and powerful. Voices that had never been heard before. Things many had never seen. Scenes from worlds few had visited. A cross-section of our amazing, ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/05/pangea-day-may-10-2008-inspiring-social-change/ Jeff Atwood made an interesting comment on his blog, Coding Horror, about how to take advantage of AJAX to send sort-of heartbeat back to the server to keep the session from expiring. I think this is a great idea. Getting automatically logged out is extremely annoying (unless of ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/05/avoid-annoying-session-timeouts-with-an-ajax-heartbeat/ The Presentation Without presentation a web page is just text. In the early days of building web sites styles and colors were mixed with JavaScript and large animated gifs. Yes, during those days they were referred to as "web sites," no one called them "web apps" yet. And ... http://www.janisb.com/blog/2008/05/zero-to-60-with-pylons-in-just-minutes-part-3/