Witheringtree » News

Civilian Life

David Freerksen — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 01:50:44 +0000

I am officially a civilian now. I just got my discharge papers in the mail.

Site Updates

David Freerksen — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 23:41:59 +0000

It only took me 5 months but I finally updated the site from WordPress 2.9 to Wirdpress 3. I wanted to redesign the theme to work better with the new features in WordPress 3. At the same time, I updated some functionality. I also removed the dropdown navigation in the menu. I also moved the … Continue reading →

First Open Source Project

David Freerksen — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 02:34:16 +0000

I just signed up for an account with Bitbucket and created my first project. I am going to be creating an open source bug tracker built on Codeigniter 2. I am going to model it based on JIRA which is a JSP bug tracker, but I have a few more plans for it. It’s just started on it and there isn’t much to see just yet. Just give me time. I am using MacHG to do all of my Mercurial commits.

I am also gearing up towards working on an open source CMS based on Codeigniter named Combustion CMS.

Darth Vader on TomTom

David Freerksen — Tue, 11 May 2010 04:19:50 +0000

Recently, Darth Vader was in the studio recording his voice for TomTom GPS. Makes me wish I had a TomTom instead of a Garmin.

Be sure to check out the website. C-3PO, Yoda, and Han Solo are coming soon!

CSS Naked Day

David Freerksen — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:34:34 +0000

Yesterday was CSS Naked Day. CSS Naked Day was thought up by Dustin Diaz. The purpose of CSS Naked Day is to to promote Web Standards; including proper use of XHTML, semantic markup, and a good hierarchy structure. In other words it disables your CSS for for a 24 hour period in order to promote web standards.

I forgot that yesterday was CSS Naked Day. So when I went to my site, I was pissed that my site was jacked up. My first thought was that my site was hacked. The styling was gone but all of the content was there. Which didn’t make sense why a hacker would do that. That I realized what happened.

That was my first CSS Naked Day that I participated in. It was pretty cool. Click on the image to see a screenshot of my site during CSS Naked Day. Also, a “thank you” goes to Aja Lupas for creating the WordPress CSS Naked Day plugin that I used.

IE6 Funeral

David Freerksen — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:09:33 +0000

Unfortunately I will not be able to make it, however there will be a funeral for IE6 on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. in Forest Room 5, 2532 15th Street, Denver, CO 80211-3902.

For more information, visit the website at ie6funeral.com

In memory of IE6, here is a representation of how IE6 renders CSS

Motivational Poster

David Freerksen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:37:32 +0000

After I posted that last image, I found one that I liked better. So I’m posting this one as well.

Happy Birthday, Marines

David Freerksen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:48:39 +0000

The United States Marine Corps turns 234 years old today. Happy Birthday to all of the Devil Dogs.

47th Mersenne Prime Found

David Freerksen — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 02:31:05 +0000

Prime numbers are a lot less common than you realize. In fact, the only way to discover new prime numbers is to use a computer. The most common way is to use distributed computing from the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project.

On April 12th, 2009, the 47th known Mersenne prime was discovered and verified. It is a 12,837,064 digit number discovered by Odd Magnar Strindmo from Melhus, Norway.

Odd Magnar Strindmo is an IT professional whose computers have been working with GIMPS since 1996 testing over 1400 candidates. This calculation took 29 days on a 3.0 GHz Intel Core2 processor.

This is the 13th Mersenne prime found by GIMPS in its 13 year history.

Victory Point

David Freerksen — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:55:42 +0000

I just ordered a book for myself and my family. This is the story of my unit, 2/3, during Operation Red Wings and Operation Whalers in Afghanistan in 2005. Be sure to order your copy!

Also be sure to visit the website for the book as well.

“This is how our grunts fight in Afghanistan. As you read, you will be exhausted, and above all, proud that these dauntless men guard our country.” – Bing West, National Bestselling Author

VICTORY POINT recounts the amazing story of the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment (2/3) during Operations Red Wings and Whalers in the summer of 2005, where the Marines ultimately destroyed a ruthless Taliban- and Al Qaeda-linked insurgency cell led by a terrorist named Ahmad Shah.
Little has been comprehensively written about Red Wings, and virtually nothing has been disclosed or written about Operation Whalers, the subsequent mission, which yielded a vastly different outcome than that of Red Wings.

Semper Fi!