I recently came across an application called Sikuli, and upon digging in to learn more was very interested to learn that it accomplishes its goals through computer vision algorithms in part. CV has some amazing applications, but this is one of the more practical and applicable to my daily life. Essentially, Sikuli is an automation …
Read MoreFire it up, Kindle that is… 0
My Kindle Fire arrived yesterday afternoon, and so far, it’s exactly what I was hoping for. Why did I sell my iPad 2 ? I sold my iPad 2 because: it was too big, the screen resolution is crappy, and I didn’t and wouldn’t use it to create content of any kind, ever. After trying …
Read MoreiPhone 4S, and promising future for Siri 0
My iPhone4 went through quite the sequence of unfortunate events prompting an upgrade to a 4S, which I wasn’t originally planning on doing… My Apple devices have rarely had any concerns of loss or damage at my hands, until the ip4 that is. The original 4 went with me to, and helped me navigate Moscow …
Read MoreNotational Velocity… kicks ass! 0
I’ve been using my own auto-hide drawer note thingies for years, and while they never evolved to what I’d envisioned, I never came across something that worked better for me. Until now. I recently came across Notational Velocity, and ever since it has displaced my own jpeekaboo app Syncs via DropBox, keyboard driven, brilliant! I …
Read Moresoftware creativity vs. escaping poverty = similar psychologies ? 0
I read this article today, and saw similarities between the psychology described with that of the creative aspects in software development. Specifically, that in relation to common practices at a wide range of companies that enforce specific technologies and structure architectural review around the “how” instead of the “what, and why it’s important”, these practices …
Read Morebit.ly and 1.usa.gov, thanks bit.ly! 0
Wow. Just… Wow. Very rarely do companies surprise me in good ways anymore, but bit.ly surprised me in an amazing and positive way this week that I felt compelled to share. I recently read that bit.ly had started shortening .gov domains to 1.usa.gov/foo, and I just happened to be in the middle of attempting to …
Read MoreJoli OS/Cloud => buh bye family sys admin duties 0
If you’re tired of administering a family members Windows PC, or just happen to have an old computer lying around that you’d like to do something with, JoliOS is definitely worth checking out JoliCloud In terms of building a low-maintenance-required computer for anyone, including kids or the elderly, Joli OS works a treat. As you …
Read MoreJavaScript RIA frameworks. Building a GUI for the web… 0
Last fall for the annual AGU (American Geophysical Union) conference, myself and my NOAA and Russian Academy of Science (RAS) colleagues put together a web UI to show what was possible using some of our data and web services. The culmination of that effort was the Auroral Resources Toolkit (ART) The RAS folks focused on …
Read Morelimera1n + Cydia, get more from your iOS device. 0
It’s been quite some time since I mentioned or discussed iOS related jailbreaking. The relatively recent release of limera1n and availability of some truly useful applications on Cydia compelled me to say a few words. Cydia, for those who don’t know, is essentially an unofficial App store that you get access to by jailbreaking your …
Read MoreMagic Trackpad ? Indeed… 0
One of my earlier posts was about modifying an MBP trackpad for use on the desktop, and despite going to all the trouble of creating a DIY trackpad from an MBP case top, I have to say I’m very pleased with Apple’s recent Magic Trackpad. Everything about the device is perfect for me. I’m using …
Read MoreiPhone 4 antenna histeria 0
I’ll start by saying that I got my iP4 on 6/23, a day early. I’ve been using it exclusively since, and have terrible reception at home (nothing new for me). Even with the latest 4.0.1 I drop lots of calls, and have periods during almost every call where the call fades in and out but …
Read Moreand so the un-freeing of former Sun products begins… 0
OpenSolaris powers my home brew NAS, because ZFS, DTrace, and a number of other key items it provides simply rock, and allow me to do things more quickly and easily (with less grief) than alternatives I’m willing to consider. Yesterday, I saw Ben Rockwood’s blog post regarding a license change to Solaris proper, and it …
Read MoreThe Tablet Device Rush 0
There has been a deluge of tablet devices recently, so much so that the iPad feels ever more late to the game by the day. Lesser known brands such as Archos have 5″, 7″ and even 9″ parts these days, while the major manufacturers are just jumping into the game (HP Slate?). Microsoft has it’s …
Read MoreIf you build it (web services), will they come ? 0
A recurring thought came to me again last August while attending a conference called CSIG (Cyber-infrastructure Summer Institute for Geo-scientists), that there seems to be a rush to use new technologies whenever possible, commonly without considering why or how they’ll be used. I’ve experienced this first hand not only in technology companies, but research centric …
Read MoreDIY desktop glass multitouch/touchpad from a unibody Macbook 0
~6 months or so ago, I purchased a top case from a parted out 13″ unibody Macbook from eBay, with the intent to strip off the touchpad and make a DIY desktop touchpad USB device out of it. Similar things have been done before, albeit not for these glass touchpads. I thought it would be …
Read MoreClosure, perhaps it will convice some JavaScript haters to stop… 0
Google open sourced their Closure JavaScript Tools! If you’re not familiar with them, and you do any web development at all, now’s the time to read up. In short, this is a set of groundbreaking tools for the JavaScript developer, which bring some amazing capabilities to the table. If you are in any way involved …
Read MoreGoogle Voice on iPhone :( 0
Like a few others, I am disappointed by Apple’s decision to prevent Google Voice for iPhone. I am not as upset as some, but do think the situation is unfortunate. The startup I worked for a few years ago was doing something very similar to Google Voice, called VerbalOneNumber, which wasn’t as successful as GrandCentral …
Read MoreiPhone 3GS GPS disappointment 0
I’ve been mostly pleased with my 3GS, with one exception: GPS flakiness. The hardware upgrades certainly make a difference, not only in applications but general UI responsiveness, which makes the whole experience of using the device better. The GPS however, bluntly put, sucks. In Maps, I’m lucky if it ever uses the GPS (yes, even …
Read MoreWhy is engineering software so hard/different than other engineering pursuits ? 0
I’ve been pondering this topic a lot lately, and have had several discussions with colleagues and friends on what steps one might take to improve matters when working on a project which has issues associated with this topic. This Dr. Dobbs article brought the topic to the forefront of my mind and has recently resulted …
Read MoreThe Tipping Point 0
I added The Tipping Point to the books page. This book was recommended to me by my former mentor at Sun, and was quite good. Follow the link or go to the books page for more details.
Read Morenow that’s a great idea! (data.gov) 0
The government decided to do something useful with a few of its copious data stores, excellent! After perusing data.gov a bit, there are quite a few useful data sources. More importantly, this could be much larger than it currently is, and represents a huge opportunity for so many federal organizations to share their data not …
Read MoreRating Software Developers 0
It takes all kinds of people to make any project successful; designers, code monkeys, requirements junkies, architects, and there are no repeatably good mechanisms for evaluating folks to determine if you want them to be a part of your team or not. This sort of rating or measurement is something people from all three perspectives …
Read MoreJavaFX 0
another day, another scripting language… I’ll reserve in depth comment until I’ve had time to thoroughly explore JavaFX, but the choices facing today’s software folks are staggering to be certain. Personally, I’m finding it harder and harder to keep anything in my own memory, syntactic details and the like. More often than not these days, …
Read MoreUnified Storage Simulator and the 7000 series NAS appliances 0
Have a NAS ? Have a NAS that can tell you graphically which client(s) are hogging the NAS while pushing/pulling which file(s) ? yeah… I didn’t think so. November 10, 2008: Sun announced the 7000 series storage products, which combine some very useful administrative features with the power of Solaris and ZFS. I’ve had the …
Read MoreChandler 1.0 0
Most folks may not be familiar with the Chandler project, but it has some interesting goals. The project finally hit 1.0 recently, and reached a point that it’s stable enough for serious usage, IMO. I’ve used at various points in the past, and I must say that they’ve done a great job. I’ve been using …
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