05 Jan 12 Tools of the trade – A would be review.
Do you think that you could tell the difference in the work of a mechanic using a thumb adjustable wrnch vs. one using a voice activated wrench? Better yet, could you tell if a painting was done with a horse hair bush or a cow hair brush? The same is true for photography. I’ve seen creative genius take better photos with an iPhone than I’ll probably ever get with my percision engineered German glass wielding 21megapixel beast of a camera. Why? Not because I’m not a creative genius (Ii’m not) and not because I don’t go to pretty places (I do). I don’t get as great an image because most of the time i’m a pervert, that is to say, I spend more time fantasizing about the technical aspects of the equipment than actually using it. It’s a bad habit, I know, and I’m working on it. It’s not entirely my fault, I’m just a victim of marketing that has taught me to obsess about my tools so that I buy better ones.
So now that you know that I know that equipment doesn’t translate into the quality of a product (I’ve built better websites using my phone than my friend could build on his MBPro). We can indulge in the relative (and insanely marginal) differences between camera companies. Actually I’ve changed my mind, this post has made me realize that if I really want to break the habit and start taking better pictures then I have to stop being a perv. The end. Go take some pictures with whatever camera you have. Go paint even if all you have is a wall and some crayons (unless you are my kids, then do not color the wall please.) Go write a book, you don’t need a better typewriter, you don’t need a sharper pencil, you need to write. Now.
25 Jan 11 Bottom Ten Android Apps
GStrings : A chromatic tuner for any musical instrument. I use to keep my whistle in perfect pitch.
GassApp: Tracks your fuel consumption and expense on a monthly basis derived from info at each fill up at the pumps.
Chroma Doze: Generate continuous colored/white noise by sketching a spectrum on the screen. I use it for waking up animals at the zoo with the annoying high pitch sounds, makes for better pictures.
Antennas: Plots the cell towers that are in your area on a google maps map. I use it for debugging my cell connection issues.
Caffeine Tracker: Tracks your current level of caffeine. Great way to make sure you have let your body metabolize enough caffeine by your bedtime.
Police Radio: Lets you listen to police, emt, and fire radio broadcasts, it really good, i’d say the delay is less than 10 seconds.26 Aug 10 The best phone on the market
While the Samsung Vibrant that my wife has is technically superior to my Nexus One, it’s not a better phone.
29 Jan 10 Friday Wrap Up
Nexus One
T-mobile had some issues that looked like they were going to try force everyone to pay the WebConnect dataplan, but i bet google put some heat on them becasue it was causing major bad PR. A reboot of the phone brought it all back to normal ( think my 3g might even be faster now).
Apple
iPad fail, maybe some moms out there will like it, but the only way to reach them is by selling it in in a big display at Target, (
Google Wave
It looks the same, boring.
Honda SI
The super cold weather seems to make the VTEC about twice as loud, I LOVE IT!
HTPC
Just ordered an ATI 5750 to play NFS Shift, it’s also officially supported by PowerDVD unlike the 4200HD so hopefully it will have smoother BD playback. It also has bitstream TrueHD Surround audio, which should sound exactly the same on my stereo speakers.
11 Feb 09 Web apps, digg ‘em (or reddit, whaever)
I hate sign ups, especially just to try a new web 2.0 app, some of them even require getting on a invite list blech!
I do want web apps usage to take off MORE, like iPhone apps do but for browsers. I know everyone uses facebook and twitter, but only a fraction of that use edgier tools like google docs, gliffy, remember the milk, and so on… I see the barrier to entry with some of those apps so i want to help people start small by highlighting some of the “zero config” apps out there. By zero config i mean, no barrier to use, as in no interstitial sign up page or other prerequsites.
Ajaxload – Ajax loading gif generator
http://www.ajaxload.info/
Animated gifs are cool and all, but with youtube came the death of animated gifs, except for loading images. This site makes these images in your choice of colors all in one page.
Let me google that for you
http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/
If you read my blog you’ve seen my post on dealing with peoples computer questions. This site is a good choice for both comic relief and really helping the horse that you bring to water actually drink!
Colour Lovers
http://www.colourlovers.com/
I love Colour Lovers, not least of which because they spell color correctly. It’s handy for getting color pallets, some of them are so well done that they casue viceral reactions. The coffee color makes me think that i smell a fresh brew. A vary theraputic site, as well as helpful.
Nizzote
http://nizzote.com
This is one of mine, it’s like a super portable notepad, actually i think it loads faster than notepad.
NotifyURL
http://notifyURL.com
Also one of mine, it’s basically the classic tinyurl.com but it sends you an email when the person you send the link to clicks on it.
Now Do This!
http://nowdothis.com/
At first this seemed too basic, it lacks portability… But i never use other to-do lists because they have too many features and i hate logging in, this one is awesome because it’s so simple and the impact is huge.
Hmm… Thats all i can think of for now, and googleing “no sign up required”, and the like, didn’t turn up much. If you have some please add them in the comments
04 Sep 08 Chrome Inspector – Dom Explorer – JS Console
Shreenshot of another cool Chrome Feature. To see it right click on, say, an image and choose “Inspect Element”
29 May 08 Rendered useless
To render, or not to render. So for some reason i have a stigma against having HTML in my c# code, i still do it all the time, but i get a bit ashamed and hope no one is looking over my shoulder. It stinks because to make changes the application will have to be recompiled , but since the web is stateless it’s not a huge issue to replace the DLL every now and then, it’s still clunky. There is the alternative of putting the HTML in a Database.
Note for a large section of HTML I always put it in a file and simply read it from file.
There is another alternative for HTML, using the .net HTMLControl.RenderControl, in which HTML is at least guaranteed to be valid and it looks better in the code. I tried it out and you have to do this to get the HTMLControl into text:
public static string RenderWebControl(HtmlControl html)
{
string htmlContent;using (MemoryStream dataStream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (StreamWriter textWriter = new StreamWriter(dataStream, Encoding.UTF8))
{
using (HtmlTextWriter htmlWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(textWriter))
{
html.RenderControl(htmlWriter);
textWriter.Flush();
dataStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);using (StreamReader dataReader = new StreamReader(dataStream))
{
htmlContent = dataReader.ReadToEnd();}
}
}
}
return htmlContent;
}
Not terrible but still a quite a few loops to jump though, way more than using string builder to build a table.
So what about the database option, i guess it’s ok, it’s a performance hit compared to having it in the code, but it allows for changes to be made to a live system, i guess it depends on how many string your going to need and what the focus of the system is. But after trying to render the controls i feel a bit better about poisoning my code with some foreign matter.
09 Apr 08 Nascar Fans vs Steve Jobs
Amir: while(vista !=crashed)
16 Oct 07 Fix Reddit RSS Feed especially on NetVibes in FireFox
** update ** looks like reddit has fixed this now, oh well it was fun to make.
New Reddit seems to have mucked up the links in their feed which means i cant right click on a title to go straight to it on a new tab which is annoying enough for me to scrape the feed and generate a new one here:
http://www.truthfulness.net/reddit/reddit.ashx[they have fixed it now so i killed this]
Enjoy!
27 Aug 07 I’m back
Where have i been!? Online, offline.
Online: What happened is that i got sucked into http://reddit.com, which is full of politics and i became very cynical/depressed about the chances for this country, my wife pointed this out to me, that although i now actually knew who karl rove was, that i was not the better for it. It is a difficult thing to balance staying informed of the current world and staying enthusiastic about making better, it was very easy to get sucked in, to get out i had to simply stop reading it. I actually now still read it, but just for the funnies, i skip the “bush did this WTF” sensational tag lines.
Offline: Biking, my new obsession has become biking (don’t worry still obsessed with sound and studio lighting) i’ve pimped out my bike with clipless pedals + shoes + cleats, a trunk, pro-bar tape, bike computer, sport gel seat, gloves, tuning. Broke my top speed record at the green lake WI Baha’i conference by going 37.6mph following baseem. I’ve biked to work (3.7mi) everyday for the past 3months. I don’t know if i’m in shape yet, but i feel pretty good, my blood pressure is down, my mood is more stable, my weight hasn’t changed but i’m a little more stable. The only issue i have now with biking is my hands go numb, i’ve tried several things (gloves, changing positions, seat height, using core body..) i raised the bas a little today, hopefully that will make a little difference.
I made a new portrait soft box, its 2 feet by 6 feet so it, i’ll try and make a write up for it soon.
here is some funny stuff:
http://irregardable.com – some friends new blog
That is me.
