February 28, 2003

Dumb crooks.

Okay, these guys define stupid.

Our party-crasher might have been able to guess that he was among law enforcement had he taken time to study the picture of the Framingham SWAT team on the fridge. Or look at the sweatshirt worn by the host. It had the words Burlington Police Academy and a pair of handcuffs stitched on.
One thing led to another, until Garland asked the detective if he wanted to get high.
Posted by Daniel at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2003

Solo Drive - Result.

Well, I survived, found the restaraunt I'll be going too later today, and induldged in stopping at a book store. I think I did better at driving than I normally do -- no back-seat drivers today. Being entirely responsible is good. Much better than only partly responsible.

Posted by Daniel at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

Solo drive.

So at the age of 21.5, I'm headed out in about five minutes to drive the car by myself for the first time. It can be scarery growing up, but God is always in control.

Posted by Daniel at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2003

Touchstream Users.

I went through Google today, and found every Touchstream user that has blogged about it. There is Michael McCracken , Alex, andMark Humphrey .

Posted by Daniel at 07:22 PM | Comments (1)

Touchstream woes.

It still might be to early to pass judgment on the Touchstream, but several times this morning I have almost taken my old Apple keyboard and mouse out of the dresser drawer that I hid them in. There is not one thing that bugs me, it's just that having to think about typing takes the fun out of using the computer. I'm actually back up to my old speed for normal typing, but so far programing is not fun. I'm going to give it at least on more day of programming before trying the old key board and mouse again.

Posted by Daniel at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2003

Touchstream day one.

Well, here is the quick review of my new Touchsteam SP ( not the iGuesturePad Salva was wondering about). I have had it less than a day now. so I might be more used to it later after the recommended weeks of getting familiar with it.

Gestures are great. Has to be my favorite feature. A swipe across and the window closes. A different swipe and and a new document opens. It's like having Opera powers everywhere. The paste gesture is a work of art.

Mousing is not so hot. I feel like I have less control than with a normal mouse. I could be just not used to it yet (In fact. while typing this, I found a better way to mouse).

Keyboard is different. I decided to learn touch typing yesterday, and so I am very slow. I think with time I'll like this keyboard. Right now I can't keep up with a AIM conversation.

Posted by Daniel at 12:21 PM | Comments (6)

February 21, 2003

The Touchstream Arrives.

You will have to pardon the lack of text in this entry, I am still learning how to type on this thing. :)
Posted by Daniel at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Waiting for the TouchStream.

I'm waiting for the TouchStream keyboard to show up. UPS website shows that it has been on the truck for eight hours now. Hey, I think I hear a vehicle. ::Mutes itunes::. YES!!!!! I'm off to rush the UPS truck!!!!
Posted by Daniel at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

I made the mistake of using Ruby..

Yesterday, I made the major mistake of writing a small program in Ruby.It will take me a month to get back to writing PHP without thinking how easy things would be in Ruby.It is so pure and powerful. Everything else is looks like gunk.
Posted by Daniel at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2003

So much fame, so little work..

So spent a grand total of three hours on the WebCam widget - and it seems to be one of the more popular things I've done. In today's email I find:

I am Toru AMEMIYA, an editor of a Japanese magazine called "MacPeople".
MacPeople is one of the most popular Macintosh-related magazines, and is
published by ASCII Corp. bi-weekly.
I would like to introduce your "WebCam" in our page on Mar. 13th, so would
you give me your authorization to put your products on our article and to
include it in the CD-ROM, please.
Posted by Daniel at 09:06 AM | Comments (1)

February 18, 2003

Even Bad Days can have Good Sunsets.

Beautiful sunset tonight. I just hung out by the window and took pictures of it as it slipped away. Turns out Mom and one of my brothers were taking pictures as well down at the other house, so I'm not the only on that thought it was extra-super-konfabulas gorgeous.

Posted by Daniel at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)

A global long day..

Calling a day a "Long Day" is about the same as calling it a "Bad Day". While it's not always so, this evening I was looking back on something I had done a while ago - and realized I had done it this morning! Today "Bad" and "Long" went together. Bad days seem to have struck many other of people as well. Here's the quick run down of what happend today.

  • A bug in one of quicky programs wiped out the database, loosing a bunch of data. Real blow to the Ego. ( First mistake like this I have ever made - and last I hope.)
  • Early this morning, while working at family business, I noticed that the aluminum I was working with, was acting weird. Kind soft like silly putty. I called my dad over, and we checked it. Way below hardness specs, and we had had to throw out about two thirds of the material. That extruding plant that made the stuff has some quality problems.
  • [Shelley] Power's interview
  • And there was somthing else too. But it's been too long of a day to remember it.  :)

I wonder, do "Bad Days" jump on the whole human race at the same time?

Posted by Daniel at 10:21 PM | Comments (2)

Paul Graham.

I just stumbled across Paul Graham's website. His articles are dead on, and express clearly many of the things I've thought about. Here is a must read on why I like web programing. Here is one about why I love being home schooled, and usually feel like I'm walking among aliens when with "normal" high schoolers. Compare my favorite programing language, Ruby, with his list of reasons of Why Lisp Rocks.

Posted by Daniel at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2003

Yet another good color site.

Yet another good color site.

Posted by Daniel at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

One handy color picking tool.

I just found the Visibone Color Lab. Wow, that's one handy tool. As you click the colors, they are added to your pallet on the right hand side, and you can see how the fit together, as well as how text looks on each.

Posted by Daniel at 10:13 PM | Comments (0)

My sister gets a blog.

I set up a blog for my little sister this evening. She came over and had the fun of picking out the colors for it. It should be fun for those that know her to read. She writes huge amounts of emails to her friends usually every day, as well as stories galore.

He was explaining to me that Blog is short for Web log. Personally I think it should be called a Wlog. I suppose there is a great history behind why it is called a Blog instead of a Wlog and if I don't find one I shall write it myself.
-- Elizabeth's first post
Posted by Daniel at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)

Why are you telling us your names?.

Why are you telling us your names?
Because we take full responsibility for every aspect of the site. If something goes wrong, we’re the ones who will fix it. Also, we’re both egomaniacal masochists. --From the Oddpost FAQ

Yup, putting your name on something is a sign that you care, and willing to stand up for it. It's odd how hidden most peoples names are on software sites.

Posted by Daniel at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

Computer Names.

Stevenf wonders what kinds of names people give to their computers. Hanging around under my old desk are:

  • Sneezy - A duel 500mhz PIII, from back when that was was a screaming fast machine. It never liked to shutdown, and whould hang every time I tried.
  • Sleepy - A second hand 500mhz Compaq Athlon, picked up when it's hard drive died on my younger brother, and he felt the urge to upgrade. Used for playing games on.
  • Doc - The office file sharing computer, with a raid inside. I almost never have to mess with it.
  • Happy - My first real Linux computer. A 400mhz PII office cast off, it serves as NAT for our home network, and used to be used as a web sever.
  • Dopey - Some gave us this computer. It has Bios problems, runs at an incredible 33mhz, and just runs fine as a router under Linux.
  • Magnus - The FreeBSD webserver. Identical twin of Sleepy. Used to belong to Dad, until it's HD died, and Dad upgraded. My first *nix computer that had a reasonable CPU.

The Mac's don't really have names, which actually turns out to be a compliment. I don't think of them of having their own personalities - they are extensions of me. People that name their fingers or eyes are pretty rare. It's usually just "my fingers", or "my eyes". If I'm talking about one of the Macs, I'll say "MY PowerBook".

Posted by Daniel at 08:47 AM | Comments (5)

February 15, 2003

TouchStream.

What’s truly about the TouchStream ST (and all Touchstream products) is that key, mouse, and gesture input all occur in the same overlapping area of the MultiTouch surface. This means that when you switch between typing and mouse, for example, you don’t have to move your hand to grab the mouse since it’s always under your fingertips.

I want one of these keyboards. :)

Posted by Daniel at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)

My Konfabulator WebCam Ap.

Thursday night, I started to play with Konfabulator. Someone on the forums was asking for a widget to view web cams. It looked like an easy change to an existing widget, so I did it and released it on the Konfabulator gallery. Now it's had 1,500 downloads in about 48 hours, and the emails are starting to come in with new feature ideas.

Probably the coolest thing about Konfabulator is the speed that it lets you build a little program. It took me all of a half an hour to build my program - and that with never having used Konfabulator before.

Posted by Daniel at 07:55 PM | Comments (7)

February 14, 2003

Valentines Day Blues.

"A coward dies a thousand deaths, A brave man only once." I got the truth of that saying hammered into be today, as I was too scared to even say "hey" to girl I admire. The day was mostly spent in cycling from kicking myself for not saying anything, gathering some courage, and loosing it again. Not fun at all.

It's odd. I'm not scared of welt-inducing paintballs. I'm not scared of leading a team of people. I'm not scared of quoting or doing a large programming job. I'm not normally scared of losing. But today I was scared of... really nothing, and ran away. Most of today was somewhere near a worst day-in-my-life, from the combination of fear and guilt-about-fear.

In order to never have a repeat of today, I've resolved to follow the John Wayne way, "Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway" (And I'm posting my resolution publicly so I can't back down later. ::grin:: )

Posted by Daniel at 11:14 PM | Comments (2)

True words.

"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties — but right through every human heart — and all human hearts." ---Alexandr Solzhenitzyn

Right on!

Posted by Daniel at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

Movable type 2.6.

Movable Type 2.6 is out, and I'l playing kid in a candy shop with the new text formating options. Here I'm testing Textile.

Test

Now for a pargraph

  • Horse
  • Dog
  • Cat
Posted by Daniel at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2003

The best desktop.

And the prize for the best desktop goes to gong szeto

Posted by Daniel at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2003

Heart Ripper.

Cambodia-Phnom Penh-Tuol Sleng-posted rules.jpg

Somehow I stumbled across this image from Cambodia last week. It such a silent heart ripper. Wether in civilized, western Germany, or third-world, asian Cambodia, when men forget God, bad things happen.

Posted by Daniel at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2003

The Van was Stuck.

stuck_van_side.jpgstuck_van_front.jpgpuppy.jpg

While going to look at the Swissy Puppies, and dragging some friends along with us, John pulled over to the side of the road to let a car pass, and we promptly got STUCK! (A friendly neighbor later pulled us out with his pickup truck.)

Posted by Daniel at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2003

Visible Earth.

Note to self: Very cool site with tons of satellite images of the earth.

Posted by Daniel at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2003

Goodbye, iBook..

My iBook moved on too a new life at JAARS today. Just for grins, here is the iBook's history.

Back in 1999, I purchased a G3 PowerBook (Bronze). It was my first Mac, and it was one AWESOME computer. Then one sad day around two years later, after printing some pictures for Mom, I stood up and promptly tripped. I came crashing down. The top of PowerBook got smashed into the sharp corner of a nearby chair and when I opened it back up, the lcd screen had been shattered. It was heart breaking. I called CompUSA and they said the $250 warranty that we had bought did not cover LCD damage - even though I remember the saleswoman when we bought it spending several minutes explaining that it did cover such things. They said they would replace the LCD for around $1000.

I was laptop-less, and Mac-less - very bad. As soon as we had another trip coming up, I bought a new laptop. Since I only felt like spending money had recently earned, I bought the lowest end laptop Apple had for sale. It was a G3 500 Mhz, Snow iBook. I got up early the day it was supposed to arrive - September 11th of 2001. In between news of the towers being hit, the Airborne Express man pulled up, and dropped off the iBook.

Normally I have between eight, and nine computers around me. Macs, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD. I use the strength's of each OS, and avoid their weaknesses. This was my second Apple computer, but it came with OS X, which was love-at-first-sight.

During the month we spent in Europe, Alaska, and the Caribbean aboard the cruise ships Infinity and Constellation, the iBook did everything I needed it too do. During the day I learned new programing languages on it. In the evenings I would crop the day's photos, chat with friends via iChat, read my emails, and make needed minor changes to sites I maintain. At night it hid under the bed, patiently uploading over a slow modem the hundred or so photos I took during the day.

It's only faults were a slightly slowish processor (my fault for buying the least expensive model), and shortish battery life. The 15" Titanium Powerbook now fills the iBook's place, and life... moves on.

Posted by Daniel at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)

Intelligent Lighting..

I just dug out the second website I had ever done - Intelligent-Lighting. It seems like I did this aeons ago, and yet it was last updated on June of 2000, only two years a half ago. Wow, the world and my life has changed a lot since then.

This site is really only of use to people that want to use the MA Scan Commander lighting board. But hey, they can find it with google. :)

Posted by Daniel at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2003

Fusebox.

I'm trying to figure out the FuseBox architecture. I have friends who think it is the greatest thing on the earth, and that they picked up the hang of it in just ten minutes. I've been reading, and hunting around websites for a couple of hours today. So far, I've still not groked it yet. It's odd because normal I understand new concepts right off the bat....

I guess when I get time I need to download and play with it.

Posted by Daniel at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

February 04, 2003

New Customer, Simple Site.

Today I did the simplest, smallest website I have ever done in my life. Only five pages, pure HTML, layout done with tables, no PHP, no database, no nothing - and only one line of CSS. I even forced myself to use Dreamweaver instead of coding by hand. The customer wanted a site that he could update with Front Page, he repeatedly talked about how much he liked simplicity, and he did not want something expensive. Thus, my quest for a fast design time, and use of only HTML. All in all it came out looking very well for a few hours work.

I've been debating weather to put a little "Site Design by..." at the bottom of the pages. On one hand it might get me more business. On the other hand business gotten by word of mouth is so much better than from customers that have been "advertised in". Also it might mar the appearance of the site - I mean his customers are not looking for website design, they are looking for information about his company. So I'll probably leave it off...

Now I have to think of some way to wow him by putting something extra into it, before I call him up to tell him the design is done. One wowed customer turns many new customers down the road as the word gets around. Besides, it's fun to wow people.

Posted by Daniel at 11:20 PM | Comments (1)

February 03, 2003

FedEx get a clue, please..

RAWR! I've spent the afternoon working over the phone with two techs on our FedEx system. Still no solution. As a parting shot before hanging up, the official FedEx dude recommended that I replace the modem - the same modem that he is connecting successfully through with PCAnyware. So now I have to reinstall FedEx Server since they ran out of ideas, and then call them back.

FedEx Server is the cruftiest thing imaginable. It's three purposes in life are to ask the main fedex server on behalf of your application how much a package will cost to ship, ship a package, or track a package. Simple right? Not in their opinion. There are 48 executable programs, over 1,500 files, and twelve top-level directories in the FedEx program's folder. Total Cruft. Oh, and did I mention that it does not even ship FedEx Ground? Or that installing the software to ship FedEx ground destroys FedEx Shipmanager Server?

I'd say about once a month something goes wrong with it and then it's a day or two battle to get it working while wasting hours of multiple people time. Inevitably, the FedEx guys have no clue about what is wrong. They poke around and change lots of numbers, and inevitably mess something up that we don't find out about for a month. When things start messing up, the whole cycle begins again.

Either the tech today had no idea of the fundamental, most basic rule of debugging - divide you problem - or the FedEx system is not able to handle it. He just treated it like a black voodo box. Change a number, disconnect from my computer, tell the other tech to tell me to retry dialing, wait three minutes for it to time out, and then repeat twenty minutes after we started. Not once did he try to see what the modem was really doing, or where the problem actually was occurring.

UPS actually has a good system for this, but we don't ship UPS anymore. Unlike UPS, FedEx, does not delight in smashing your boxes, losing your shipments and refusing to pay for them, insisting on picking up a day's shipments at 9am, or calling you up weekly for months threatening legal action for non-payment of a paid invoice and ignore all faxes of the check used to pay it. Nope, we cannot ship UPS. We've tried again several times, and gotten burned badly each time.

If I were the head of Fed-Ex, I would immediately copy UPS's XML based World Ship system. While it's not perfect, it's simple enough. Hundreds of programs support shipping with UPS, and it would only take the developers of them a few hours to change their software over to ship with both UPS and Fed-Ex. With the increasing importance of tying the world's software together, Fed-Ex may get beaten up by it's inferior in shipping if FedEx does not do something soon to fix it's horrible shipping software / protocols.

Posted by Daniel at 08:00 PM | Comments (7)

New workspace.

code_station.jpg

At long last I've move my desk out of the attic into a civilized room with true climate control, a big window, and non-distracting surroundings. I'm so much more productive this morning than I have been in the last weeks. Crawling through fireberglass insolation to run the network was definitely worth it.


I've started a new time scheduling for myself as well. I get a big glass of water, decide on the project I will be working on, start up iTunes with an hours woth of music selected, then code away. I ignore the frantic desires to check my email, read the latest news, check the forums I read, or anything else except instant messages from friends (I can code and chat at the same time, and enjoy doing so). When the music stops, I stop concentrating. I reply to any accumulated email, check NetNewsWire, and do whatever I'd like to do. Then back for another round. So far this system has been working great. I don't get bleary code eyes, nor do I waste a morning reading news and hoping for more news to show up.

Posted by Daniel at 03:21 PM | Comments (1)

February 01, 2003

Andrew gets a deal.

andrew_gets_a_deal.jpg
My brother Andrew earned a reputaion last week at the car model store for big purchases. Today he got to go into the back room, and hunt through the most expensive car models (By expensive I mean expensive. Some of the cars had prices of $250). Andrew knows a car bargin when he finds one. With the air of a Connoisseur, patiently choosing the best, he picked out out fifteen cars in fourty five minutes of hunting. Then we had to help him carry them all out to the car. When Andrew finds a good deal he strikes like a rattlesnake.

Posted by Daniel at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)