John Callender

Things I've Done

• I'm a member of the boards of directors of the Citizens for the Carpinteria Bluffs and the Carpinteria Valley Association.
• I'm a bird-watcher, and have recently been obsessing at the Sutro Forest Birdcam Blog.
• I'm the author of the book Perl for Web Site Management.
• I helped create Lindenavenue.com and Carpinteria Valley Leaders, Main Elementary School's entries in the International CyberFair 2001 and 2000 contests, respectively.
• The Delos International site, for which I provided web consulting, features some beautiful classical music. My favorite sound clips are the ones on the Duruflé page.
• One day during a particularly manic phase I spawned lies.com.
• The Amateur Astronomy Observers Log lets you share your observations with the rest of the planet.
• The Beginner's Guide to CGI Scripting with Perl is a basic tutorial that assumes no prior programming or Unix knowledge.
• Recently I've been playing around with SoCalSail.

Things Other People Have Done

• A lot of people have asked me for help learning HTML. Lately I've been steering them to the following sites:
  • HTML Made Really Easy, by James Marshall, is an excellent tutorial.
  • Kevin Werbach's Bare Bones Guide to HTML is a great cheat sheet to keep by your side.

• It amazes me how far Microsoft is willing to go to deny you access to simple, useful protocols. Friends don't let friends write HTML with Word (or FrontPage, for that matter). Look deeper. View the source. Use EditPad.

• Google is the best Web search engine today.

• Archimedes said, "Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world." The following levers are highly recommended for your next world-moving project:
  • The Perl programming language changed my life. It can do the same for you.
  • Red Hat Linux: An operating system that actually works.
  • The Apache Web server is the Gutenberg press of the modern era.
  • Want a database? Don't have a few hundred grand lying around for an Oracle license? MySQL to the rescue.
  • Don't forget the O'Reilly books.

The 'Proud Dad' Part of the Page

She's a whiz with a computer, too. :-)

More images of Julia (and John and Linda) are on the Grandparent's Page.

William was born on December 16. More images of him are available on the William page.

I've decided that what the Web really needs is more pictures of kids and cats.

By popular demand, still more kid pictures.

Someone was foolish enough to buy me the digital camera I wanted for Christmas. Here are the results.

Title this one, "Julia Tries to Avoid the Camera." Or maybe A Boy and His Backhoe.

I haven't had time to make a formal thumbnails page, but you can browse a directory of recent images, including William in a tidepool and the beautiful gardens of Julia's piano teacher, Bettine.

John Callender jbc@west.net