Harper's Friend : View All

Last Saturday on the way home from the beach we stopped at cafe just south of the De Young around 9th Ave. From the outside table we were sitting at I had a view of the a video rental store across the street. Something about it reminded me of the video rental store across from Nakoma Plaza that my Mom would take me to in middleschool to rent videogames.

I hadn't ever really remembered this common occruance before, probably because there wasn't much to remember. The store was lit overhead with flourescents and movies were displayed in rows and around the room. Pretty typical. While I would select a game my Mom sat out in the car waiting. Doing what I don't know. Sometimes, I remembered, I would take an extraordinarily long time to select a game and I imagined that my mother must of been proud of my throuroughness because she never said anything to me about taking too long. What a wondeful and patient mother I have, feeling proud in my cafe chair.

Today I called her to in part to confirm this memory. I asked about the waiting but she didn't remember. In fact, the only thing she remembered was how quick I was to select a game, that with all those video game magazines I would read, I "seemed to always know what I wanted."

**

The assistant teacher said to me, "Intelligence is like the camel's nose under the tentNo (a brief pause in thought) no. Intelligence is like the thin edge of a wedge, it helps to get your foot in the door but there is still a lot work to do."

**me and the boys

I've been reading Dooce's blog for several years now, and found some of her posts during her pregnancy to be a little over the top, irritatingly melodramatic. But her posts since the birth of her daughter really really resonate with me. Like this one. I can remember trimming my fingernails in the first week and only getting four of them done. It was a good 36 hours before I got to the remaining six. I can't really explain why, what I was doing. Yes, in theory Annabelle sleeps 16 hours a day, and shouldn't I get lots done during those many hours she sleeps? But in practice, not so much.

This week I finally felt like I got into a groove, getting Annabelle up and bathed, efficiently running errands with her, getting her in and out of the carseat and the awesome Bjorn that my sister got for us. Yesterday I was up, showered, bathed Annabelle, had company, and made it to Sam's, Target, and Walgreens before 2. Yes, I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. There's been more leakage of bodily fluids; today she both spit up on my shirt and went to the bathroom on my jeans, but what the hell, we're all just electrons. It mostly washes out.

So after finally getting the hang of this, alas, today is my last day of maternity leave. (Tomorrow is a holiday, so I'm not counting that.) Where did the 12 weeks go? On one hand it seems like a million years since Annabelle came into our lives, but on the other hand it seems like 12 weeks went by in an instant.

I'm heading back with very mixed emotions--a heavy heart to leave Annabelle, but a desire to get back into work things, see my friends, and use parts of my brain that have been dormant for the last 3 months.

I'm doing my first AdWords ads for iLetDown, so I've written a few ads like this:

Relax and Pump Quickly
Trigger your letdown reflex!
Buy iLetDown for iPhone.
www.attachmentcomputing.com

These were working fine until yesterday, when I tried to edit them slightly, and all my ads were halted because... Apple has asked Google to prohibit the trademarked "iPhone" term from being used in AdWords ads.

Huh? So the maker of this phone that's being promoted as a platform is preventing developers from advertising the fact that they've created products for that platform?

I stayed away from Apple for a long, long time, so maybe I'm just being naive about how this part of the world works. Does Apple always crap on its community like this?

Segway Tour in D.C., originally uploaded by biblicone.

My birthday present from -k: Segway tour in Washington D.C. I would highly recommend riding a Segway if given the chance.

Here we are in Canada… well at least on the grounds of the Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C.

Outside of the Capitol.

Curtains of Night, Heart Shaped Hate and Trophy Wife house show tonight. Three heavy as hell all-lady bands house show that I am missing because I am covering Cornerstone. Everyone, please go in my stead. And I do mean everyone....

Thrown: The Art Of Yo-Yos
Originally uploaded by Unkle Steve"Thrown" is an exhibit of yo-yo related artwork, created entirely by yo-yo players!

Ink drawings, paintings, airbrush, silkscreen, customized yo-yos, and plenty more from a motley assemblage of yo-yo players young and old will take over the Shoparooni Annex.

Yo-Yos are a creative endeavour that is generally abandoned with youth. Through this assemblage of works from adults and young adults who never stopped playing, we hope to present the art of yo-yo play as seen through the eyes of the people who never gave it up. Also, there will be beer.

Participating artists include:

Seth Peterson (IA)
Mark McBride (CA)
John Higby (MA)
Krisgoat (OR)
Steve Brown (OH)
Sonny Patrick (CA)
Drew Tetz (MO)
Jensen Kimmitt (Canada)
Doc Pop (CA)
Paul Escolar (CA)
Ashkahn Shahparnia (CA)
Eric Carlson (WV)
Saxton Moore (OH)
Mark Hayward (PA)

For those who cannot attend, all works will be available online after the opening at www.shoparooni.com!

Chicken Monster via Food Party. Beans & Clam via Mental Stimulation The chicken one is my favorite.

Starting fathers day part two followed by part three. Awesome. Happy F-day to all of you. # Crazy Clementine http://twitpic.com/81lfi # Need an accountant type person in Greeley Colorado # I need Pupils in my Dojo: http://ginx.com/-RDUxD Create a fighter and fight me to join my crew # Hating on his nemesis http://twitpic.com/889og # RT @africankelli: I have a new therapist named Retail; we’re in session @ the gap. I feel I need this # Devil dogs are so tasty # You may kiss the royal paw http://twitpic.com/8c46k # @pvponline good call in reply to pvponline # Budwieser plant in Fort Collins, stage one of our Utah diving adventure. Go us. #roadtrip http://twitpic.com/8gxql # One hour in, second set of wind farms. #roadtrip http://twitpic.com/8h4zq # Go clouds go! Tried to send this in wyoming but had no luck. About 20 minutes away. #roadtrip # We made it. #roadtrip is now #divetrip # Ikea Utah does not ship to Colorado but Ikea Internet does. WTF Ikea. Deliver to your isn’t home to your home if you don’t deliver there. # Getting cheese and chocolate at the melting pot salt lake city #

               

Headed to Lincoln City for the weekend. Meeting up with Aaron, Mallory, Blake, Vanessa and Joe. It’s going to be fun. I’ll probably post pix as I take them so check my flickr.

Okay, it’s been about 2 weeks since we moved, and we are almost 100% settled in. So it’s not quite as impressive as last time when we were completely unpacked in three days. But still, I think that’s pretty good. I’m feeling less stressed and more like I get to sit back and relax and decorate the new place at my leisure. We are working on getting some pics up, but here’s a little one to satisfy your curiosity:

This is a good pic because you can see a few cool things: the hardwood floors, the crown moldings, the non-white walls (hooray) and the nice built-in bookshelves. There’s an identical one on the other side of the tv.
We’ll have many more pics soon enough.
Of course, the best way to see it is in person. Just floating that out there…
Now I just have to decide where to hang all the pics, where all the decorative stuff is going to go and what we are going to do with all the space. :) I think I may get a couple of area rugs, but there is no rush for that.

All of you who are wondering how the cats are adjusting (and I know that you are all dying with curiosity) will be happy to know that so far, they seem to be enjoying it a lot. There are many more windows to look out and many more interesting things to see outside. They really couldn’t see much out the old sliding doors.
Alrighty, look for another post soon.

Toodles!

So, just to bring you up to speed - Harper (and Google) hooked me up with a developer version of the "Google Phone" or G1. As a developer phone it's sort of "unlocked" or rooted and comes with a fancy case. In short, it's awesome - but definitely, definitely a geek phone. I imagine the actual unrooted version you get from t-mobile is a bit easier to work with, but I still think it's more of a geek phone than a mainstream device like the iPhone. However, I can totally see this OS growing - especially with some better hardware in the future.

Here are my thoughts on the device after a week of use.

Android - the Google OS

I am really, really digging the OS, its openness, and its tie to all of my Google account data, but it still feels a bit beta. I also feel like maybe too much stuff is going on in the background; it can run a bit slow at times (but that may be mostly my fault, ha).

I love the connectivity and constant updates from Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and various email accounts. I love the realtime data.

The browser absolutely rules. Being able to have multiple windows/tabs is awesome.

I don't use my cell phone for actual phone calls often, but I feel like making a phone call on Android is too hard. It takes at least 2 more steps than any other phone I've used. I mean, it's a phone; it's supposed to make calls. That should be the simplest feature.

HTC - the hardware

I think the G1 is clunky and cheap looking. The giant base is hard to type around, but I'm getting used to it. I do love having the option to type with either an onscreen keyboard or the physical keyboard... but I'm really looking forward to using this OS on a better handset.

The camera is also kinda wack. I wish it had a flash.

The Battery

WTF! Do I honestly have to charge my phone both at night and while at work? I mean it's not really a hassle to have my phone plugged in during those times - but it's definitely not normal. There are all sorts of blogs and articles about "how to improve your g1 battery life" - and what is their advice? Turn everything off. Yep - to make the G1 last all day, you need to turn off half of the cool features you bought the phone for. Turn off 3G, wifi, GPS, bluetooth, autosyncing, and while you're at it make your screen really dim - then your phone will last all day without a problem! wtf, bummerville? And I also have to keep a knife around just to get the freakin USB door open... but that's not that big of a deal I guess - I've already started working on my coke nail for when I need to whip that thing open and charge my phone in a bind. ;)

The battery power, or lack thereof, is really my biggest beef with this phone.

Apps

I love all the apps that can completely tie into the OS and its data. Apps can override the default SMS app, use GPS, use the browser, add data to the address book, toggle phone settings, etc. The openness rules so much.

Here are some of my favorite apps.
Google Maps (with Latitude) is pretty solid, but I wish latitude used the GPS to update my location a bit better. or i wish there were options to have it only use GPS and maybe be able to set an update interval. I could go on and on about this because I'm a mapping and location freak. Basically latitude is so close to satisfying what I want... but not quite there. And why did Latitude work better on my Blackberry than it does on my Google device? haha. BrightKite - it's still in beta, slow, and has crashed on me a couple times... but this is definitely filling my Latitude void and becoming the way I track my daily travels. It's also mostly how I am now setting my status for twitter, facebook, and everything else. I'm already playing with the API - it's awesome. Connectbot - a really nice SSH client Greed - an awesome RSS reader that ties into your Google Reader account. Shazam - a crazy app that listens to nearby songs and tells you what they are. Tunes Remote - a super flaky iTunes remote, but when it works - it's awesome. Twidroid - amazing twitter client. I'm finally back to semi-realtime updates from my friends.
And here are some nice utility apps, I've been using.
Facebook Sync - updates your contact photos with their profile pics from facebook. SMS Popup - you know how the iphone pops up incoming texts in a little window? This does that. Rings Extended - lets you select any audio you want for a ringtone. Toggle Settings - nice quick way to turn on/off battery saving features. Sort of a must-have on this phone.
Other apps that look awesome that I haven't really used.
Last.fm, Shop Savvy, Oregon trail, Fbook, Sky Map, Open Home, and Bettercut

So yeah. Overall I'm really happy with the device. I'm excited to see Android progress and crawl into some better shells. Thanks a ton to my buddy Harper and a couple of the Google Open Source guys - Daniel Bentley and Chris DiBona for hooking me up.

Now, I just need to think of an app to write for it... Perhaps something with mapping or the GPS? ;)

Tags: Tech

With all the cold weather we've been having, you'd hardly know it is June.  While I'm looking forward to warm summer nights in our backyard, I've been content to spend the evenings inside lately -- listening to the rain fall and eating impressive quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables.  I'll get back to my stories from Buenos Aires soon, but first I wanted to share this pretty salad with you.

Summer Strawberry Salad
Ingredients
Greens, rinsed and spun dry
Strawberries, rinsed
Salty hard cheese (like Parmesan or Pecorino Romano)
Good Balsamic vinegar* 
Method
To make a salad for one, add a few handfuls of your greens to a large bowl.  Slice in a few fresh strawberries and drizzle with Balsamic vinegar (about a tablespoon, you can add some sugar or oil to cut the flavor if you prefer).  Toss together. Shave a few thin pieces of cheese over the top and enjoy.
*(I'm obsessed with the fig Balsamic vinegar from Old Town Oil)

I have a flight at 7:30pm to head to San Francisco to spend time with my girlfriend and also to connect with some folks for work. There’s nothing abnormal about this routine, but on this night - I’m missing out on something that I’d like to have been a part of. Tonight at 10:01 (my time) I will be missing out on being “able to choose a username for [my] Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to [my] profile.”

Basically what that says is that as long as I’m sitting on an airplane, I’m not in front of a computer, trying my best to snag facebook.com/jeffrey. It’s ok though, and here’s why. I’m not Jeffrey. I’m Jeffrey Kalmikoff. Besides, as long as there’s that bastard giraffe hocking toys to kids, I’ll never be the Jeffrey. And really, if Toys ‘R’ Us folded tomorrow, and I did become the Jeffrey, it’s still really just be Jeffrey Kalmikoff.

I was talking to my younger brother Josh on the phone as I drove to the airport. We discussed a few things, including a really kick-ass idea he has for a gaming website, but also talked about snagging his Facebook vanity URL. His point of view, “if someone gets what I want, I’ll just think of something better. Something wittier.” “Josh” I said, “do yourself a favor and just get your name - that URL will likely outlast whatever you found funny or witty or interesting about something like Uncler3mus (his twitter name).” “Just trust me on this one,” I said.

Even in the last 6-7 months the shift from pseudonym to real name in one’s online identity has been pretty prevalent. Many of my friends (myself included) went from pseudonym to real name - and some from real name just down to initials. What the shift really means is that everyone is seeing the value in having a single name - or at least a few names that all essentially mean the same thing. For me I’m Jeffrey (twitter), JeffreyK (skype), Jeffrey.Kalmikoff (gmail), and the one I’m starting to phase out FancyJeffrey (aim) - which at the very least still has my name in it.

I wanted to share those anecdotes to illustrate what I’ve come to terms with, and I think that it’s important that other people try to realize it as well. Your name only matters as a way to be a linkable entity to an action. Having an awesome “online handle” isn’t going to make what you do online (or off) any better than if you would have been using your own name. We’ve learned this lesson in the last 10 years as we started out being scared to have people learn our real identities online, so we created fake ones (mine used to be iFDL). The time of fear online is long since past, so it’s time to stop hiding behind “RadDude199″ or “ButteflyGrl22″.

As the time ticks away until Facebook opens the flood gates to vanity URLs tonight, maybe try to resist the urge to go after your current online moniker or pseudonym, and just go with what’s real. Just be you.

Read a book. or even just one more chapter.
Unload the dishwasher.
Do laundry.
Paint toenails.
Clean the bathroom.
Make grocery lists.
Write thank you notes. Or any letters in general.
Organize desk drawers.
Rearrange the closet.
Shop for books on amazon.
Search through the cook book for good ideas.

And for this morning’s delay… I took a nap. Yep. A nap. 15 minutes after I woke up. From a 7 hour, restful sleep.

It’s not the first time that has happened, and I am not particularly embarrassed about it.
Just annoyed that I didn’t wake up earlier so that my nap would have felt a little more fulfilling.

It’s been a little over a year since I transitioned to my new company. While things are stable on the company front things are quite unstable in the home front. No the wife and I was still ok but Cammeron is still having a devil of a time coping with everything that is happening. I can’t even imagine how hard it is as a child let alone a teenager to be ripped up from all you know and love and to but into a new environment. While he has adjusted to school just find other than always calling his school ghey there are other things that just have hit him a little bit harder.

Having a relationship is hardwork even when your young but having a long distance relationship when your young can take even a bigger toll or your sanity. I had to sit down with him last night and have a serious talk about prioritizing everything. I couldn’t emphasize enough how important it was that he understood he can’t control everything that other people do or that as you get older relationships don’t get any easier but communication is the key. He did let his emotions get the better of him last night as stuff beyond his control caused his anger to rise up enough where he smashed his cell phone. Although I was angry at first I didn’t yell and had to take a step back and analyze the whole situation, plus I know he has seen how me and his mother act sometimes when we let our emotions get the better of us.

I know that their is a plan for our family out there its just hard as heck working through the various ups and down.

coming as soon as i have a reliable net connection and figure out all my old ftp shit. and when i relearn html.

Making art with robots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j0_fi_tkL4

Dahlias1

Originally uploaded by RedMgn

More Dhalias

First video project on the new Vista PC. I did love my hand-me-down Powerbook while it lasted (thx Matt), but I just couldn’t justify the cost of replacing it with another Mac. I already miss rebooting monthly instead of daily.

Wow, Sony Vegas is surprisingly intuitive. I’ve hit a couple stumbling blocks so far (can’t get DivX to encode), but for a pro editing suite, the learning curve is pretty gentle.

Music (so to speak): Biosphere, “As the Sun Kissed the Horizon”

http://blog.atomly.com/.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Update:

Mitch Garnaat from CloudRight has pointed out that you can actually set the policy of the S3 file in the set_contents_from_file call instead of making another roundtrip request into S3 (and saving you some coin). Thanks Mitch!

Btw, I’m using App Engine Patch 1.0 and Boto 1.6a.

Sorry I haven’t updated my blog in a few weeks months, but I’ve been a little busy. With that said, along with Erlang, I’ve been playing around with Google App Engine, App Engine Patch (for Django support), and the Boto library (for Amazon S3 support). After not having touched Python code in a few months, I wanted to document some of my lessons learned to help over developers who may be in a similar boat.

Lessons learned If you’re upgrading the App Engine Patch, make sure you don’t have the App Engine library installed in a hidden directory Uploading bulk data changed ever so slightly If you’re not running off of Boto’s trunk, you’ll need to patch your Boto installation to work with App Engine. Make sure the App Engine library isn’t installed in a hidden directory

Apparently, Google’s SDK 1.1.9 doesn’t like to rely on files that won’t be uploaded with your application – and hidden directories are no longer uploaded. I was running into the dreaded purple-nurple screen of death. Thank goodness for this AppEngine Google Group post, but I’m still not even sure when this popped up considering Google’s articles still refer to this setup.

Bulk upload

Compared to the previous SDK I was playing around with, bulk uploading changed significantly. I recall having to patch Goog’s bulkupload.py file to get unicode support. However, their new remote api tool has definitely fixed this issue, so +1 for Googs. People are reporting that uploading unicode is still broken, but it’s not. Or at least it wasn’t for me. Second, if you’re like me and don’t read documentation, you’ll find out (the hard way) that the method signature to HandleEntity changed. Instead of accepting a datastore.Entity, it’s now expecting a db.Model object.

Note: When actually running the remote api tool, you’ll also want to make sure your PYTHONPATH includes your current project. (Another one-liner in the documentation. )

Integrating Boto + App Engine

I wasn’t running off of Boto’s trunk and I was getting an obscure type conversion error. Being too lazy to check out the source, I jumped to their issue tracker and found a patch (halfway down the page) by one of the App Engine Patch lead devs. Apply the patch and you’ll be on your way to uploading images/data from App Engine into Amazon S3! If you’re looking for example code, I’ve included a small snippet of what I tested.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 @staticmethod def upload_to_s3(original_filename, photo): """ Upload a photo file, storing its original name as metadata in an S3 bucket """ connection = Connection(settings.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, settings.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY) bucket = connection.get_bucket(settings.AWS_IMAGE_BUCKET_NAME) photo_uuid = str(uuid.uuid4()) new_key = Key(bucket) new_key.key = photo_uuid new_key.set_metadata('original_filename', original_filename) new_key.set_contents_from_file(photo, policy='public-read') return photo_uuid

Note: I only tested the code above with small images ~300-500K in size and it seemed to work perfectly fine (with no load! ). As always, feel free to use, steal, take, and/or copy anything on this blog. Hopefully somewhere, someone on the Interwebs will find these tips handy!

Enjoy!

HDTV’s are awesome. Watching HD video on HDTVs is even more awesome. Playing HD mkv files with anything other than a home theater pc (htpc) is not awesome. About a month ago I moved my desktop PC in to my living room and gave it HTPC duties. It served it’s purpose well but I’d like to reclaim it so I can do some after hours coding on a side project. Apple recently released an upgraded Mac Mini and it appears to be quite a capable HD media center device. The entry price for a Mac Mini is $599 and before I purchased one I decided it was due diligence to see what the same $599 could get me on the PC side. Here is what I was able to put together.

hec Black 7K09 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case $48.99

GIGABYTE GA-E7AUM-DS2H Micro ATX Intel Motherboard $119.99

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor $164.99

CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $44.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $89.99

SAMSUNG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model SH-S223Q $24.99

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder 1229 $109.99

The total here is $603.93 and includes everything needed to build a complete HTPC. Below is a comparison of this machine and a Mac Mini.

         

 

VS

 

  $599 Mac Mini $603.93 Custom PC Processor 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L2 cache 3MB 6MB System bus 1066MHz 1333MHz Memory 1GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM, 4GB Max 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 16GB Max Hard Drive 120GB Serial ATA 5400 rpm 1TB Serial ATA 7200 rpm Optical Drive Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive 22x DVD+/-R, 16x Dual Layer Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 128MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory NVIDIA GeForce 9400 hybrid SLI Video out mini-DVI output; VGA output (using optional adapter); Mini DisplayPort HDMI, DVI-D, VGA Audio out Built-in speaker, combined optical digital audio input/audio line in, combined optical digital audio output/headphone out Realtek ALC889A codec, High Definition Audio, 2/4/5.1/7.1 Channel, Dolby Home Theater Support, S/PDIF in/out TV Tuner None Dual input ATSC / ClearQAM / NTSC plus a FM tuner USB, Firewire and eSATA 5 x USB 2.0, 1 x Firewire 800 12 x USB 2.0, 2 x Firewire 800,1 x eSATA Networking Gigabit Ethernet, Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (802.11n), built-in Bluetooth 2.1 Gigabit Ethernet Mass 2 inches x 6.5 inches x 6.5 inches, 2.9 pounds 3.9 inches x 13.8 inches x 14.5 inches, ~10 pounds Operating System Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard Windows 7 Beta 7000 (Free for now)

Analysis: The Mac Mini lacks HDMI output. You would need to run a DVI cable to your TV and an optical audio cable to your amplifier. This requires a separate optical TOSLink cable. With this cable the Mac Mini outputs 5.1 surround sound but is unable to do 7.1 or DTS audio.

Another concern with the Mini is the cpu speed. The 2.0GHz Cure 2 Duo chip will not be able to decode Blu-ray and high bitrate h.264 video without dropping a significant number of frames. There are ways to make HD playback work. The 9400M gpu can easily handle HD video decoding but you need to have the proper software. In Windows, you need NVIDIA’s pure video HD package installed for gpu acceleration in windows media player. You could also pick up PowerDVD which does very nice gpu accelerated playback of all video except mkv files. Seriously PowerDVD what the fuck. Unfortunately, the Windows version of XBMC (my personal favorite htpc application) does not support gpu accelerated playback at this time.

In Linux the VDPAU libraries recently released by NVIDIA do a good job of gpu HD video decoding. Most of the major Linux apps, VLC, MythTV, Xine, MPlayer and XBMC have preliminary support for VDPAU now. A Mac Mini running Ubuntu, via Boot Camp, would be a good choice to take full advantage of the Mini’s hardware.

I’m not an OS X expert but I’m going to assume that the Apple engineers have enabled gpu video acceleration within OS X. Long story short, If the Mini can use its gpu for video playback, it’s in the clear. If not, then 1080p video and Blu-ray is going to look shitty. The 3.0GHz Core 2 Duo chip in the PC box is fast enough to decode Blu-ray video along with other high bitrate h.264 videos. The faster cpu gives you a lot more flexibility when you choose your OS and media playing applications.

The PC also has a TV tuner card so you can use MythTV or MediaPortal to turn your box in to a fully featured digital video recorder.

If you’re interested in saving money you could save about $100 on the PC cpu and get Core 2 Duo at around 2.0GHz. You could also lose the TV tuner for another $100 of savings. Finally you could save an additional $50 by getting a 250G hard drive instead of a terabyte hard drive. This would put the total cost of the PC around $350 and would still be a little better hardware than the Mac Mini.

When it comes down to it, you pay Apple for the OS and the form factor. The Mac Mini looks pretty sweet. It’s quiet and uses less power than a PC build. OS X is a solid operating system with some very nice features. For me, virtualization on OS X is amazing. In a perfect world, I’d surround myself with Macs running VMWare Fusion 2.0 and I’d be knee deep in OS X, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04. In this world, I need HDMI output, DTS sound, Blu-ray and h.264 decoding so I’ll stick with the PC hardware.

Share this post:

First things first: The Kindle is awesome

I read a lot. I am not like those crazy people who read a book a day or anything, but i have been reading up to about 2 books a week for the past few years. They are not crazy books, mostly science fiction and fantasy, but they are not small books. I read to chill out. My day pattern is to go to work, work, get home, nap, hang out with hiromi, play computer and then read until i fall alseep. The reading part is VERY important to get my mind and body to a place where I can actually sleep. Needless to say, I take my reading seriously.

I ordered an original Kindle way back when they first came out. I was back-ordered for quite awhile. It was enough time for me to question whether or not I would like the device. Luckily, my friend edith was also in the same place – she and i chatted incessantly about what the future would be like with the Kindle. It was a bright future.

I ended up getting it around mid january 08. The first book I read was Terror by Dan Simmons. That is a serious business book. I had started the hardcover of the book earlier in the month and finished it on the kindle. That was my test. It was successful. Although i hated the fact that kindle pages and paper pages don’t really line up – the experience was the same. I was able to read fast and was able to forget about the buttons and terrible design of the kindle (like Zach Klein said – it looked like the consumer electronics version of the Pontiac Aztec).

After Terror, I read the appropriate Diamond Age by Neal Stephenon. I felt that I was closer to the “Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” than I had been before. I was reading books on an electronic device that was hardy, easy to use and quick. I was able to give it a seemingly unlimited amount of content and could use it for quite some time without a battery change. Like I said above – it is awesome.

Around this time I discovered the dark and scary underworld that is ebooks on the internet. There is an awesome community of people surrounding ebooks. They are involved with liberating DRM’d ebooks, converting from one format to another, uploading mass libraries of free ebooks, cataloging ebooks, etc etc. It is awesome. If you are interested in free content – there is an almost unlimited amount of free content that is compatible with the Kindle available online. There is also an unlimited amount of pirated books too. They are harder to find and I feel terrible when I find them (I apparently would rather pay authors than musicians. hah). One thing i noticed while I was experimenting with ebooks – technical manuals and what not don’t render as well as non-technical books. I think it has to do with the number of diagrams and tables. They don’t render terribly – but often are not nearly accurate to what i imagine the author intended.

How you get the ebooks to the kindle is part of the magic. The kindle has what Amazon like to call the whispernet. It is, as far as i can tell, a sprint EVDO modem built into the device. Amazon uses this to wirelessly deliver content to your kindle that you buy from amazon.com. Once again – it is awesome. You click on a book in amazon and BAM – its on your kindle. You are not limited to using this JUST for amazon’s content. You can do it with your own ebooks as well. All you need to do is register your email address with amazon and then send books to the yourname@kindle.com email address. The books will appear on your kindle for a small cost ($0.10 i think). If you don’t want ot pay for it, you can send the content to yourname@free.kindle.com and it will return the book in the kindle format. You can do this .txt, .pdf and .doc files easily.

The kindle file format is just the .MOBI ebook format. Which in turn similar to the .PRC ebook format. The Mobi file is a remnant from the Palm days. it is basically the Palm Database format that was used for various applications on the original palm platform. What this means is that all the ebooks that end in .mobi and .prc are natively compatible with the kindle. If you had purchased books for use with the mobipocket reader (an awesome ebook reader for windows), there is a good chance that they were .mobi files. You can copy those to the documents folder of your kindle (when you plug it in to your computer via USB) and they will show up in the book list without any work. This really opens up your options for cheap or free ebooks.

The trick then is to figure out how to convert pdf files and what not to well formed, well meta data’d .mobi files. This makes your kindle happy and allows you to continue to sort by author without having your email address be listed as the author.

I went a year reading just the Kindle. I read two paper books that were not available in a digital format during this time. It was interesting. I felt as though I needed to work out to lift the heavy hardcover books. The kindle makes you forget how heavy books can be. My arms are now wusses.

When the Kindle 2 was announced, i ordered two of them. One for me and one for Hiromi.

The kindle 2 is a huge improvement on the Kindle 1. It is thinner, better performing and a bit easier to use. It is not as easy to turn a page – but it is also not as easy to accidentally turn a page either. I like the new design. The optional leather case is amazing. It works VERY well. i was having to remove the leather case from the original when I would read it – i don’t have that problem with the new one.

There are a lot of small software tweaks that have trickled their way to the Kindle 1 as well. They are separating out your uploaded content from the content that came from directly Amazon. I am also having a hard time finding things that are lost on the kindle. I suppose i could search – but i never think of that when I am looking for content. The interface on the Kindle 2 is much faster. The pages turn faster and the books load faster. The screen is amazing. I really like it. I don’t like the fact that I can’t easily turn off the wireless with a hardware switch. I liked being able to not interrupt my reading to turn wireless on or off.

All in all – the Kindle 2 is a huge improvment over the Kindle 1. If you are able to upgrade, do it. And then give your original kindle to someone close to you who wants one. That is the best plan.

Hiromi loves hers. I was worried that she wouldn’t like it – but it turns out that it works very well for her. She likes the size and the ease of use. She took to it very quickly.

When I got my kindle 2 I was showing a couple of my coworkers some of the data about it. Specifically the whispersync stuff. I told them that I wouldn’t be surprised if they released an iPhone app that allowed ebook reading on the Kindle. I based this on the success of the Stanza app. I stated to my buddies that I was only confused as to the strategy to release such an app, especially on how it could accidently stifle the Kindle 2 sales.

Then a couple days later the Kindle app was released. Like the Kindle – it is awesome. hah. With the Kindle app for the iphone and the Kindle, you are able to sync your placemarks on the books you are reading. You could read to a certain point in a novel while on your commute – then go to a meeting and pick up your iphone and continue reading from where you left off on your kindle. Then you coudl pick up the kindle and it would sync to where you left off on the iphone. That is cool. I tried it and it works. It is a bit wonky – but for the most part it works great. The only issue i have with the app is that it doesn’t have ANY of the content that you upload via email. It is only amazon purchased content. Lame. I read a lot of “found” books and a lot of purchased books. An example is a series of books where 2-4 are in the amazon kindle store, but book 1 isn’t. I find book 1 elsewhere and then buy 2-4. However, I can’t read book 1 on my iphone. Only the kindle. WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO. ;) I understand amazon’s reasoning for this – and I don’t expect it to change. I do wish i could push my emailed books into their cloud and handle them a bit better (with metadata, etc). I doubt that will happen.

If you read a lot and want a great reading experience, you should buy a kindle.

ニュアンスはなかなか掴めなくて、ニュースを要約するのは難しい！

大学院試験のやっぱり難しくて、競争が厳しい。

今日は、また日本のお客さんがきていくれて、
日本語で仕事できるってことにやり甲斐が感じさせた。

今日もアメリカの友人のハーパーと話をして、Twitter.comこんなものを教えてくれた。
本当に面白い！言語の選択は日本語と英語だけあるが、たぶん日本でもはやってるのかなって思う。


愚痴とかいっぱい言っても構わない。
言いたいことだけ、言い放題です。

まさか、ずいぶん遅れてるのかな、あたし

みんなぜひやってみてぇ♪


明日も図書館へ行く予定。
さすが、受験生だな。一日9時間ぐらい勉強して、大変だ。



今日は、ここで

では、おやすみぃ

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with Harper, Brian Gorbett from Microsoft, and Sumit Nijhawan from Infogix. Brian did a great job of summarizing the panel over at Port 25. If you have time, you can check out his video here:

sitting on a open source panel from brian gorbett on Vimeo.

There is a rumor that more video will be posted soon.

So, like everyone else in the internet world, twitter has been enough to keep me from posting here. Not that I post that much here, but the desire is gone, so I am not even thinking about it anymore. The perpetual lie to myself is gone.

But I really like this domain name, and I want this to be an aggregation of all my internet related stuff. Think friendfeed but not on their server and without comments, because really, I am not sure I want people to talk back to me at that level. I’ll still have a blog for bigger posts (I am being optimistic here) and there will still be comments there, but the otherwise no.

So there will be changes, but I’ll cover the big things with redirects so things should operate per normal. I hope the new thing will rule. I have started the concept, but I haven’t started coding it yet. Scratch that, I am confident it will rule. RULE. RRRUUULLLEEE.

so, eli tagged me in an internet meme. apparently I’m supposed to list seven things about myself that are interesting or obscure, then tag 7 other people to do the same.  This should be interesting… as I’m barely introspective enough to think of seven things people might find interesting or obscure, and I’m not sure I know seven people that haven’t already been tagged.

Hilarious.

Ok, without further ado…

I went to hardcore punk shows with my mom.

I used to be very involved in the punk scene in Philly, even though I am not musical in the least. I helped my mother research her doctoral dissertation about the sXe scene in Philly…  that involved going to a bunch of hXc shows with my mom. Incidentally, to this day, I don’t own Minor Threat’s discography, but I have permanently borrowed my mother’s copy. I used to have really long hair that confused people

I married my high school sweetheart last year, about 10 1/2 years after we graduated from high school. That is neither obscure, nor interesting. However, knowing that when she first met me she didn’t know if I was a guy or a girl is both obscure and interesting. (I was chubby and had really long hair when I was 13…  it wasn’t the only time people didn’t know, though it was decidedly the most hilarious.) I used to be an art nerd

When I applied to college I applied to two types of schools; those with excellent math programs (Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley) and fine art schools (RISD). I chose math and went to UCB (for about three months then dropped out to be an options market maker on the PCX options exchange…). I stopped doing art for a couple years, and started again in 1999, at the time, I would sign all my paintings with “detour” and the year. That is where detour1999 came from. I don’t paint anymore, but the name stuck. I am French

I am a citizen of the United States (and also of France.. shhh, I’m not sure if dual citizenship is allowed in the US atm.) I read a lot of mysteries

I read a lot of mysteries. I generally go through about 1 a week. I like them because I don’t have to think at all. I have recently started [re]reading a bunch of Agatha Christie books. I generally read as my main source of relaxation rather than TV or video games. I am a Quaker

I am a mostly non-practicing Quaker. I was raised Quaker and still consider myself to be an atheistic Quaker. Basically this means that I try not to be a dick, I try to value all people, and I’m non-violent. It does not mean that I eat a lot of oatmeal, or that I worship Wilford Brimley (which people have thought was what Quakerism is all about, it’s not). I like old watercooled volkswagens

I am a very weird old watercooled volkswagen fanatic.  I have a 1991 Jetta diesel that I bought about four years ago for $450 that I drove every day for about three years.  It still runs awesome even with it’s 280K miles, even though I haven’t driven it in a while. I also have a 1981 Rabbit Pick-up (aka the caddy) that will be getting a turbo diesel motor that I am rebuilding that I tore out of my other ‘91 Jetta that I scrapped. I also rebuilt an ‘84 rabbit diesel for my parents… I could go on for hours about that…

so, on to the tagging some of these people aren’t currently blogging. those people are hopefully going to start:

joe curlee - is crazy
bryan knight - we do a lot of websites together.
aaron salmon- is a great friend and makes the internet pretty.
jake nickell - he made threadless, and makes me laugh all the time.
armelle richard - my sister is amazingly awesome.
atkins meyer - is both hilarious and crazy smart.
jeffrey kalmikoff- is amazing and makes things pretty.

The rules:

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog. Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

damn, that only took me like 3 weeks…

Ich werd jetzt wieder diesen Blog nutzen. Macht mehr Spaß.

  

A

After the previous mellow entry, I thought it might be nice to include something a little bit more high-energy. Now, the first few times I saw Jay Gilligan perform, back in the late nineties when I moved to the Midwest for college and started attending juggling festivals out there, his work was often very slow, very experimental. He could spend ten minutes manipulating a pair of juggling rings through a series of awkward body poses without making a single toss. His juggling in those shows was very unique, and I appreciated the creativity, but it was not exciting for me. (As a small aside, I do not think the upcoming contrast represents a change in Jay’s performance style; I probably had just missed his higher energy performances until this time.)

Then came Kuka:

A collaboration between Jay Gilligan and Manu Laude, Kuka’s subtitle is Pop Juggling, calling to mind, for me at least, pop music. Kuka is exuberant and energetic. There is no talking, no attempt at straightforward jokes with the audience or clowning buffoonery, but I smiled through the whole show. These two captured a feeling of spontaneous joy in playing around with each other and with the juggling props. As the review in Juggle magazine, (which I have since lost, and am therefore forced to paraphrase instead of quote,) said, the Kuka show walks a line between choreography so jazzy and fun it looks like improvisation, and improvisation between people so in tune with each other, it looks choreographed. At the time that I saw this show, I had relatively recently stopped juggling with my main juggling partner of five years. After the performance, I found myself actually feeling lonely, and wishing I had someone with whom to enter into that juggling space, where you’re so in step with your partner that juggling patterns just click together, and you’re both breaking ground into exciting new tricks and patterns, and laughing together the whole way. These were feelings I had encountered assorted times, sometimes at conventions with certain jugglers, learning new crazy passing patterns, sometimes with a particular partner when everything came together. I was sad, but I was also thankful that Kuka had taken me there again, at least for a while.

I’d like to add a bonus video that I came across recently, while looking for clips for this series of posts. This is another trailer, this time for a video that Wes Peden put together with Jay Gilligan, focusing entirely on three ball body throws (behind the back, for instance, being a common example.) This showcases some of the technical chops and creativity these guys have.

Tune in next time as we slow it down again….

A

Would be to check out the new sites we made for TypeTees and Select...



http://www.theselectseries.com/




http://www.typetees.com/

We will be making some small changes to Thraedless in the next few days (really the biggest of which is centering Threadless within your browser!) so it becomes part of the loop...

Awesome, this will be fun :)

So, we traveled up to our cabin this weekend and encountered a little snow. Unfortunately, the only real snow was around the gate and the first 75′ or so of driveway which happens to be a bit of an incline. Needless to say, the 2wd Ram couldn’t make it 10 feet through the snow. The heavy front end just buried itself in the snow. I spent about 2 hours digging out a path in the snow, moving the truck forward, getting it stuck and digging it out again. The Range Rover would have been fun but it has no load capacity. We are hauling up more furniture and stuff so it just isn’t practical for anything more than the drive to the train station.

So, I’ve been looking around at a diesel van. Really, only the Ford E-350 because it has a good engine (the Powerstroke) and it can be found with four wheel drive or it can be converted with some work. And I’m all about doing some work… I’ve been wanting to learn about fabrication for quite a while and I think this may be a very interesting project. It’ll give me some time through the summer to collect the parts and then I can work on it maybe this fall. That’s my goal anyways. My wife scoffs but I like a challenge where I have to learn on the fly. I’ve become more interested in working on cars as I’ve gotten older. I enjoy figuring out the mechanicals, I guess. I wish I would have gotten over my high-school idiocy and taken a shop class back in the day.
So, I’m probably going to sell my current two trucks and start working on a new one. Fortunately, my commute is short to the train station and I’m probably going to start riding my bike when it gets a tad warmer. At any rate, it sounds fun. Right?

to make this journal friends only.

comment to be added.

xo.

I've had this blog since I was like 15 or 16 years old.
From now on I will be posting at: www.nicholasscimeca.com and using tumblr.com to update.

See you over there!

If you’ve avoided it this long, you might as well buy one now. Yes, there are tweaked SKUs shipping soon with a couple of ok pack in games, but if the live stats are any indication, all you care about is Halo 3 online anyhow.

Here’s a quick list of crap to buy if you haven’t begun to Finish the Fight.

Xbox 360 Console Includes 20GB Hard Drive (with HDMI)

Halo 3

Xbox 360 Wireless Controller

Xbox 360 Live 12 Month Halo 3 Gold Card

This is about the most emo I've ever gotten. Thanks whoever dude you are that put that record up on the internet. I haven't had a copy in years.

You know ever time we humans are challenged with something that seems to be rather impossible some body steps up to save us. I have always wondered if that is just being lucky as a society or if it is...