The most common questions I get asked by people who are really interested in what I do is ‘what are you using to build your websites with’ and ‘what javascript framework  do you use?’  It was in explaining my choices to Scott that I felt like it would be worth explaining them to the world (potential clients may be curious).

The lesser of the two questions is what I’m using to build websites.  The desktop application I’m using is Adobe Dreamweaver but I’m really only using that for the code collapsing, snippets and site organization.  My foundation of choice is WordPress.  I’ve found it to be almost infinitely customizable and flexible enough to cover just about any project.  I found Joomla too big and hit WordPress next.  I’d love to give Drupal a try but I have a strong belief that being really strong with one tool makes you more marketable than being slightly experienced with several.  I have not met a site that WordPress didn’t like.  (But just because WordPress is in my ‘lesser’ category, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s not important.  WordPress is amazing.  It’s only lesser because it’s so easy to use and largely unnoticed by site visitors.)

The bigger impact tool I’m using right now is a javascript framework called MooTools.  Scott had never heard of MooTools and I guess this is where the line between web surfer extraordinaire and web programmer is drawn.  A surfer may know which blogging tool or BB platform he’s looking at but he’s unlikely to know which javascript framework is in use.

MooTools isn’t for javascript n00bs.  You have to be fairly comfortable with coding in general but also with CSS and the DOM.  Once you’re pretty good with those, stepping into MooTools is heaven.  Once I started working with MooTools I realized that there really wasn’t a single thing I couldn’t do with a web page.  It’s that powerful.

Once you’ve decided that MooTools is interesting and deserves looking into further, have a look at Aaron Newton’s Clientside.  All of the things you want to do on a daily basis with MooTools are covered.  Man, it’s almost all done for you!  Aaron’s got a book coming out in August and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

I used to rely pretty heavily on the official MooTools forum which was shut down when version 1.2 of the framework was released.  I don’t lean quite as heavily on the community now but I invite everyone struggling with a MooTools script to try the unofficial forum at http://mooforum.net.  I cruise it quite often and try to help where I can.  My handle there is Lweel8 (it’s a bumper stumper for my punctuality when it comes to sporting events).

Best of luck to everyone out there.  I hope to see you in the forum.

My boss is really into post-apocalyptic movies and books.  If it’s dark and dreary (or has vampires in it) he loves it.  He recommended that I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road a long time ago but it wasn’t until I saw the movie No Country For Old Men (based on a McCarthy novel) that I decided to pick it up.  I hate seeing a great movie knowing I could have read the book first.

You see, the movie The Road comes out this fall.  I know it will be good because it stars Viggo Mortensen, and he doesn’t make crap.  I’ve tried to steer clear of any spoilers because I’m now reading the book but what I do know is the general story.  It is, of course, a post-apocalyptic story about a man and his son heading south to avoid the freezing cold of the coming winter.  From what I’ve read in the first 25 pages, the event occurred several years ago and the man has survived much longer than most.

The book very quickly goes from dismal to scary.  On page 5 is a phrase that so closely aligns with how I feel about my kids that I wish I’d written it.  The man is watching over his son while he sleeps and he says, “If he is not the not the word of God God never spoke.”  At this point I was very in touch with the man and thought how much we are alike.  I put the book down for a break when the man asks himself on page 29, “Can you do it?  When the time comes?  Can you?”  Clearly this is not the world I live in.  The thought of saving your child from unspeakable horrors by ending his life – that deserves a break.

It’s another one of those, “what would you do in the same situation” type of books that I love and love to talk about.  Feel free to leave me your impressions of The Road.  I promise not to read them until I’ve finished the book (which will likely be very, very soon at the rate I’m reading it).

Update:
Finished the book in one  day – a new record for me!  I do recommend it but it is not for the faint of heart.  Very emotional for fathers of young kids anywhere.  The large print and style of writing makes for a nice quick read – you could probably get through the whole thing in one transatlantic flight…

My dad is what you would call a voracious reader.  He is reading the library in Parry Sound (insert your own, “all two books?” joke here).  When he spotted my copy of Atlas Shrugged on my nightstand on a recent visit he said, “you reading that?  Let me know how it was because I couldn’t get through it.”  That basically steeled (no pun intended) my resolve to finish the tome when I was struggling with a particularly wordy chapter.

I’m proud to say that I have finished the book and can now provide an informed summary.  But that would be irresponsible.  Reading a summary of Atlas Shrugged won’t do the message justice.  What I do want to share with you is how it has changed the way I feel and act almost daily.  I don’t know if it would have the same effect on everyone or if I was in the perfect target audience but it truly did change my way of thinking.

I used to be the kind of guy who would say about a McDonald’s or Petro Canada law suit, “why don’t they just pay up?  They can afford it.”  Ayn Rand takes that kind of attitude and extends it to its logical, if upsetting, conclusion.  She gives strength to unions and charities and basically brings a form of People’s State/dictatorship/Communism to the entire world.  After reading the book I can safely say that I will never look at unions or taxing the rich the same way again.

There’s a current situation in Ontario (the Canadian province I live in) where General Motors is closing a truck production plant and the union of workers is fighting to keep it open.  What’s amazing is how disturbing the situation is after you’ve read this book.  You just want to tell the union leaders to give their collective heads a shake.  How is forcing the company to keep the plant open going to help its employees?  The company will be weakened, demand for trucks will not be increased, workers will be stuck in jobs that will have less meaning and they’ll have less incentive to improve themselves to find new jobs (which they’ll eventually need anyway).

Please don’t misconstrue my interpretation as having no feeling for the workers – once you’ve read the book you’ll understand that it’s not about not caring – it’s quite the opposite.  But forcing the big companies to take losses only for the temporary benefit of its employees is a recipe for disaster.

While I think that this book should be required reading for any high school-aged student, I do think that they could do with an abridged version.  1084 pages is too much.  I got the point after about 400 and only continued for the satisfaction of having said that I had completed it.  The fact that there’s a movie adaptation coming out soon had something to do with it too.  I always want to read the book first before I’m stuck with the vision of Angelina Jolie in a role that I think she’s both physically and ethically completely wrong for.

– spoilers follow –

The one aspect of the book that I thought was misrepresented was love.  Yeah, a good phone company commercial might choke me up and that damn Cinderella song by Steven Curtis Chapman makes me cry when I think about it, but I still choose Bruce Willis over Hugh Grant, if you catch my drift.  I just thought that poor Eddie Willers, who loved Dagny Taggart (as three other men in the book appear to at one point or another), got a really rough deal.  His only crime in the book seems to be his unflinching devotion to Dagny.  While he appears to be living for her approval, which is against the moral of the story, he is smart and he does try to make decisions and improve things.  He should have at least warranted a happy ending instead of being stranded in the middle of nowhere with a busted locomotive.  Maybe in the movie he’ll get the train running again – Hollywood, you know.