Ken Dale IV

Personal, Personal, and Beyond

Home
About
Resume
Resources
Lab
Music
Foto
Contact

I'm a software and web developer currently residing in Central Pennsylvania.

If you're wondering who I'm is, I have a page entitled About Me with a brief self-demographic. Or, just Contact me.

Recent News:

Feb 05 2009: Still here, just lack of updates. Reflecting back, I've traveled alot in the last year with ARRIS. Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, Vancouver, San Francisco. Not bad for never leaving EST time before. Pretty cool.

June 17 2008: Site redesign completed. I wanted to try out a mimimal elegent CSS style, as well as some new techniques I picked up at Adobe MAX last year. I'm pretty happy with the results!

Dec 14 2007: Merger of my current employer C-COR was completed with the ARRIS organization. I've also been moved from IT to the Technical Communications division and expect new challenges from outside the realm of IT, but still focusing on what I love to do.

Oct 10 2007: Finally moved into the new house, it's pretty exciting! It's on SR64 near Mill Hall, PA. Also, Fourth Gear is playing a crazy Halloween show this year, so stay tuned for that. Oh, and my TV at the house is a 90" projection. It's really nice, and makes for a nice home theatre.

Hmmm, let's begin with the name. I'm Ken Dale IV. Yes, the Fourth. Although, this is obvious with the giant header, and pretty hard to miss. Seriously though.

Brief Bio:

I'm twenty-three and live in Mill Hall, PA next to SR64 at my new house (the red one). I'm a hard working, easy going, problem solving professional developer. Regarding pets, I've kept fish, mainly cichlids and gouramis (and lobster!) but I don't have them any longer and I've had dogs but none currently. I drive a Grabber Green Focus ZX3, 5spd manual everything, which I like to joke about. I'm a Christian, and a hard working software developer during the day and rockstar by night. When I'm not building data driven webapps, hacking (the non-evil kind), database designing, and developing I like to bike, play video games (no MMO's!), work on the house, and just hang out. I don't have cable, and keep up with my favorite shows on services like Hulu. I try not to watch too much TV, and this does the trick. I play a few instruments, but mostly bass guitar, which I expound upon on the Music tab. I enjoy trying new things and putting myself up to a challenge, whether technical or not.

About the Site:

I'm a firm believer in web standards, as well as conforming to other design and development standards. This is what seperates a professional web developer from an amateur, the proper utilization of xHTML / CSS (or XML with XSTL — whatever framework you prefer). The seperation of layout, content, and presentation is paramount in proper design. This makes your pages accessible to all users, improves your SEO, and gives you an all around good feeling about your development work and promotes reusability. If only markup and styles were interpreted the same in every browser, we'd be set! Or, at least have less debugging.

While I have professional experience in large and medium sized organizations, I will give the highlights of my career and some recent noteworthy projects.

Quick Resume Download: KenDale-Resume.pdf

Notable Projects:

Product Wizard: Using Adobe Coldfusion, MS SQL, and clientside Javascript I assembled a tool to configure and analyze complex part numbers for ARRIS Access and Transport. Complete with user and admin backend portions, this tool allows product line managers to input their products for the sales force to run configurations. This move to a centrally managed and secure location from offline copies (Microsoft Excel) has enabled the team to more effectively manage product configuration and ordering.
Metrics Tracking Suite: Using ASP.net C# and MS SQL with dotnetCHARTING (that's how they capitalize the namespace) I am working to create a graphing and datagrid suite for all types of business metrics. This will allow for realtime views into business data metrics by automatically aggregating statistics from multiple diverse systems.
Image Library: Filling a need for a self-service image service, I transformed a PHP/mySQL Gallery2 installation into a fully featured image sizing and processing service. Graphic designers and documentation owners upload content, and the gallery software utilizing my custom code resizes, changes color spaces, and changes DPI of images as appropriate for different formats -- automagically!
TPS Reports / Graphing: Using Adobe Coldfusion and data analysis techniques I created interesting graphs and datagrids from a technology purchasing system database. Data can be sorted and filtered by location, time, device type, and cost realtime.

Project Images:

(I'd allow full size view, but some data is confidential)

Professional Interests:

Some obvious, some not. Not exhaustive by any means, but gives some insight into my professional endeavors.

Web programming
Database design
Database/web security
Security (I'm NSA INFOSEC certified!)
Network/system administration
Wireless technologies

A page dedicated to web and computer resources. Mainly, a page of cool links and neat stuff, I suspect. I'll try to deviate from the standards, and give a few gems I've found.

Web:

W3Schools CSS Reference : Enough said.
Cheat Sheets : From ILoveJackDaniels, I have these all over my workspace for those random obscure commands.
Browser Compatibility Check : Free version of BrowserCam, see your site in all versions of browsers.
Javascript 'this' : An excellent explaination of the 'this' keyword in code.
Email Riddler : Encrypt your email address on pages with JS.
DTree : Excellent JS script tree menu.

Development Server:

VirtualBox : Excellent virtual machine software, I find it faster and lighter than VMWare, but less powerful at the enterprize level.
XAMMP : WAMP server (Windows+Apache+MySQL+PHP) preinstalled environment. My favorite. Safe enough to put on a non VM even.
SVN 1-Click Setup : Source control Subversion package, in a 1 click installer for Windows.

Productivity / Blogs

Lifehacker : "Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don't live to geek; geek to live."
Noupe : "Web Developers Online Resource" My new favorite trends in web design and CSS/AJAX/whatever tricks site.
Slashdot : Obligatory.
Digg : Anything and everything.

Automation:

AutoIt -- Windows GUI Automation Scripting

Interesting chunks of code in various languages that I've written or found that I use often and were difficult issues or hard to find. Hopefully they will help you too!

Regular Expressions

        Letters, numbers and hyphens:
        ([A-Za-z0-9-]+)

        Date (3/21/2007):
        (\d{1,2}\/\d{1,2}\/\d{4})

        jpg, gif, or png image:
        ([^\s]+(?=\.(jpg|gif|png))\.\2)

        Any number from 1-50 inclusive:
        (^[1-9]{1}$|^[1-4]{1}[0-9]{1}$|^50$)

        Valid hex color code:
        (#?([A-Fa-f0-9]){3}(([A-Fa-f0-9]){3})?)

        String with 1 lowercase, 1 uppercase, 1 number:
        ((?=.*\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z]).{8,15})

        Email addresses (doesn't validate suffix, only syntax):
        (\w+@[a-zA-Z_]+?\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6})

        HTML tags (useful to strip code from content):
        (\<(/?[^\>]+)\>)

T-SQL Search All Tables Procedure (hilarious!)

        -- Source: http://www.users.drew.edu/skass/sql/SearchAllTables.sql.txt

        SET NOCOUNT ON
        DECLARE @Missing varchar(100)
        SET @Missing = 'abc'
        --Searches for 'abc' 

        SELECT Haystack = TABLE_NAME
        INTO Pitchfork
        FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
        WHERE TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'

        SELECT Haystack, COLUMN_NAME AS Needle
        INTO Iowa
        FROM Pitchfork JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
        ON TABLE_NAME = Haystack
        AND DATA_TYPE LIKE '%char'

        CREATE TABLE PigsEar (SilkPurse varchar(1000))

        DECLARE @FarmQuery varchar(1000)
        SET @FarmQuery =
          'INSERT INTO PigsEar SELECT TOP 1 SilkPurse=''Found ' +
        REPLACE(@Missing,'''','''''') + ' in HAYSTACK.NEEDLE'' FROM HAYSTACK WHERE ' +
        'NEEDLE = ' + QUOTENAME(@Missing,'''')
        --if you need find the string as a substring of a column value, change
        --the above line to
        --'NEEDLE LIKE ' + QUOTENAME('%'+@Missing+'%','''')
        --Leave it as is if you want to find the string as an exact match of a
        --column value.

        DECLARE @Murderer varchar(1000)

        DECLARE @Haystack sysname
        DECLARE @Needle sysname

        DECLARE Investigation CURSOR FOR
        SELECT Needle, Haystack FROM Iowa
        WHERE Haystack <>> 'Pitchfork'

        OPEN Investigation

        DECLARE @Miracle int

        FETCH NEXT FROM Investigation INTO @Needle,@Haystack
        WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 BEGIN
          SET @Murderer =
        REPLACE(REPLACE(@FarmQuery,'NEEDLE',quotename(@Needle)),
                        'HAYSTACK',quotename(@Haystack))
          exec (@Murderer)
          SELECT @Miracle = COUNT(SilkPurse) FROM PigsEar
          FETCH NEXT FROM Investigation INTO @Needle,@Haystack
        END

        IF @Miracle IS NULL
          PRINT '['+@Missing+'] not found'
        ELSE
          SELECT SilkPurse FROM PigsEar

        DEALLOCATE Investigation
        go

        DROP TABLE Pitchfork
        DROP TABLE Iowa
        DROP TABLE PigsEar

ActionScript3 Embed External SWF at Compile Time

        //I use this in Flex, but you probably can in an AS3 .fla as well!
        [Embed(source=”external.swf”, mimeType=”application/octet-stream”)]
        private var ExternalSWF:Class;

        var externalSWFBytes :ByteArray = (new ExternalSwf() as ByteArray);
        var l :Loader = new Loader();
        l.loadBytes(ExternalSwf, new LoaderContext(false, ApplicationDomain.currentDomain));

        var something:DisplayObject = l content;
        l.addChild(something);

I've been playing music for a long time, since early childhood. It has always been a favorite hobby, and will continue to be for a long time. I play a few different instruments, but mainly stick with bass guitar and violin.

Music Gear:

Ibanez Soundgear SR800 Electric Bass ('96 ver)
Fender FV-1 Electric Violin
Ovation Applause AEF15 Electric Acoustic
Peavey Nitrobass 450W @ 2ohm Bass Amphead
Yorkville YBX1510 400W 2x10" 1x15" Bass Halfstack
Assorted pedals (tuner, compressor, para driver, etc)

Gigs:

Currently playing with Fourth Gear, as well as a weekly gig at my church I've had since junior high. In the past I've played with various high school orchestras, as well as the Lock Haven University community orchestra. But, I don't play the violin out much anymore and have all but left the classical scene.

Styles / Bands:

I have a huge list of favorite bands, and I chose not to bore you. Instead, I'll just sum up: I like many styles of music. Anything from hard rock to classical (and gothic rock, think rock with violins and orchestra backing) suits. I even enjoy some techno time to time.

I enjoy taking pictures of architecture and nature and carry a Canon ELPH SD700 IS everywhere I go. I used to carry a Canon DSLR but I found myself not carrying it and opted for a compact. This little Canon amazes me with brilliant nighttime shots taken freehand with IS. Plus, I always have it with me! Your Camera Doesn't Matter anyhow!

Public Gallery:

I keep a running gallery of my photography at kennydiv.deviantart.com/gallery. I've included examples of what you'll find below, and clicking any of the images will take you the corresponding page.

Some Examples:

There are many ways to contact me, and I'm a member of the major social networking sites and a few forums. So, pick from one below, or find me.

Contact Me:

LinkedIn
Facebook
Myspace
VZW: (xxx)295-0410

Find Me:

Fourth Gear Schedule
Steam ID: KennyDIV (probably playing TF2, friend me and we'll team up!)