Or “Yet Another Long Over-Due Update”
I love my iPhone. No surprise there. Too busy to attempt writing any software for it, and can’t think of ideas anyway.
Been working with a web security company. NDA’s etc.
Been playing way too much World of Warcraft.
After spending a few hours with Visual Studio 2008 pro trial, I take back anything bad I have ever said about Eclipse, NetBeans, or XCode. I need a shower.
Saturday, I had to drive an hour back from my friend’s house without my car stereo. Somehow, a piece of metal got lodged in the accessory plug, shorting out the plug the car stereo are on the same fuse.
I haven’t seen the piece of metal before (shown above with the blown mini-fuse). It isn’t part of anything I plug into my car. I don’t know where it came from or how it came to be in the accessory plug.
Luckily, I knew how to disassemble my dash and was able to remove the plug to get at the offending metal more easily. I also took the opportunity to improve some of the connections on my stereo.
Still, it is strange.
I was talking with a friend of mine last week we were both lamenting that we no longer draw much anymore. Most of my artwork is all done with computers now. It’s a shame because in high-school most of my best pieces were salvaged mistakes, many started in a completely different direction than the final piece. With a computer, the cost of erasing is so low mistakes never get saved and fleshed out. In a way, creativity thrives on limitations.
In high-school, I rarely ever sketched. I hated normal pencils, hated the sound they make when marking on paper. Coloring pencils never bothered me. I always used pens if given a choice. I’d draw in pen in my sketch book with no pencil lines. Didn’t matter if I was doing cross-hatching or stipple. If I needed color, I use coloring pencils or water-color right in the sketch book. If I liked something in the sketch book, I’d paint a larger version in acrylic on canvas. But most of the time, I wouldn’t bother with a small version of an painting. My art teacher would chastise me for making “finished works” in my sketch book.
Now, I couldn’t do that if my life depended on it. I’ve gotten so used to drawing with bezier lines, my hand drawing skills have atrophied. I’ve decided to get back in the groove and sketch (still in pen though) a small character or object on paper at least one a day. 3 or 4 times a months, I’ll take one of the better ideas an create a more polished version. That way, at the end of a year, I should 52 characters or objects they could be usable for a game, comic, animation, or whatever.
I own a 4th gen 20GB iPod and a 1st Gen Shuffle. I’d been thinking about getting a new 4GB nano to replace the shuffle as I miss having the screen. Ever since I bought an adapter that makes my iPod appear as an external CD changer, I leave my 20GB in the car 24/7.
The store was out of 4GB nanos. Long story short, I got a black 80GB Classic.
I’ve never used a 5th gen iPod, but this new 80GB Classic blows the 4th gen away. Most of the reviews say the is new interface is sluggish, but it is not too bad. The screen is beautiful. Klondike is gorgeous.
I’m thinking of getting a dock with video out and a remote. That way I’d have basically have an appleTV with 2x the space, sans wireless streaming.
I’ve mostly been working on stuff under NDAs that I can’t talk about. I can say that I’ve been using JGoodies Bindings alot — and I like it. I tried JGoodies Validation — it’s not up to the Bindings level yet.
But, I’ve been playing around with Xith3D on the side lately. And much fruitless searching for a Wii. All that and random personal stuff going on and makes for not much blog updating.
It was bound to happen sooner or later living where I do. I hit a deer with my car tonight. No people were harmed and the deer didn’t hang around to answer questions. Minor damage to the hood, “grill”, and cracked the headlight of my Scion xA. Click the thumbnail above for a larger view.
I was experimenting with Google Ads, both as an advertiser and a site owner displaying ads. I’ve the removed Google Ads from the site, it’s just not worth it. People only clicked on ads when I posted a new article. Each new article earned about a dollar. Each article (except the small, non-revenue generating blurbs) takes between 3 days (med-to-long articles) and 3 weeks (tutorials) to create. At that rate I couldn’t even cover the hosting costs for the website each month. I never really liked having the ads here. The selection of ads placed with the last article broke the camel’s back. Sometime in January, I plan to create a new theme for the site and I may put image ads for my games sites and maybe some other stuff into the redesign.
As an advertiser, I can’t really see any boost in sales from using AdWords. They have a tracking system, but it’s next to worthless with the shareware model. There is too much lag time between downloading and buying to match a click to a sale. I’ll probably quit using AdWords soon as well.
I turned 30 today. I’ve had my initiation in the “Over Thirty Club”, which includes a little hat, a card to carry in my wallet, a brochure entitled “You’ll Never Date College Girls Again”, and I was told the meaning of life. The little hat is cheap. The card doesn’t work any where. The brochure contains no new information. I can’t tell you the meaning of life without breaking my solemn oath, but I can say that it reads allot like the directions on shampoo.
On the plus-side Italian Cream Torte Cake is very good.
After listening to a few podcasts I figured out that (1) I like podcasts, (2) It is hard to program or read while listening to them, and (3) it is a good time to catch up on cleaning. As you can see from the pictures of my home office, it is not spotless. But for the last two or three years you could not turn around in here. If I wanted to print something, I’d have to move a bunch of stuff into my lap to give the paper room to come out. Using the scanner meant the digging out the scanner and holding it in my lap. If I wanted to show someone something on my computer, I had to unplug it and move it out of the room; no-one else could get in here.
Over the last three years, I had probably six aborted attempts to clean this room that never got farther than cleaning under the printer desk. After 4 days of listening to podcasts and cleaning, you can actually see most of the carpet in here. I can print and scan without a massive juggling act. By the way, If you are wondering why I have expensive modular cube furniture and a *very expensive* office chair in my *home office*, it’s one of the few perks of staying with a start-up until the bitter end.
Which podcasts? I like Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code and OtakuGeneration so far.