There, I fixed it

There, I fixed it, a website for all those Ghetto zip-tie and duct tape jobs everyone has done.

Google Voice

The other day I filled out an request for an invite because i heard they were getting close to releasing google voice (thats the new and improved grand central if any of you remember back that far) and low and behold, only a few days later I got in! how cool is that. I am so looking forward to being able to screen my calls and listen into people while they leave a voice mail, and choose to pickup in the middle of the voice mail or just let them ramble on and read the transcript later. read the feature list for other cool things like 3-way and transferring to a new phone in the middle of a conversation.

i may use something like this if I need an automated script to notify me when its fallen and cant get up.

if you want to forward to google talk or something, try GroovyTel. I saw it, haven't tried it yet.

WolframAlpha names

has anyone else tried the new modern day equivelent of 'googling yourself' on WolframAlpha? this whole terribly burdeonsom task of choosing a name has me looking at any and all possible sources for a mathematical maximization to the quality of a name, and the better half disagrees what that criteria is.

check out our good buddy on WA, the cool thing is it shows you the distribution by age! it really is quite fun to look at the different distributions by age.


WA requires you to cite the source, as if it wasn't obvious so the graph is from WA.

Guns Germs and Steel

I had a debate awhile ago with a fellow engineer. which is better, to specialize in a very specific area.. focus, devote all your time and become the worlds best at the most microscopic of tasks, or to diversify a little, take the Swiss army knife approach so you can apply basic skills to a vast array of work? this show may help you answer.

Halo Ballooning

over at natrium42 they have a nice little home project, with electronics tied to a personal balloon. this should be our T-day project some year.

MBA!

I need to print a T-Shirt that says MBA on the front, and then on the back says 'been there, got the T-Shirt'. 2 more classes this summer, and i'm DONE! I'm in the bulletin for graduation, but am not planning on marching. no time for that nonsense with the kid coming and all. See the posting here

bump up

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-06/ff_keymaster?currentPage=all

wired has a fun read about a dude committed to cracking locks for over 40 years.

I've often wondered what the big deal is all about. It seems like a cutting torch could go many places too.

water battery

watch the freaky haired physics teacher (that gives him added credibility) demonstrate his water battery.

2B2B2B41544829

turns out, a nice little ping command can be used to hang up a good old fashioned modem. (no, my modem days weren't 45 years old)wow... I wish I had known that awhile ago! my AOL days would have been even more entertaining.

my new computer

shocked arn't you?

Some awesome friends snagged one for me from a university that was restructuring. a 20" aluminum Imac, 2.00ghz due core duo, 2Gig-ram, 128meg ati, 250gig HD, usb, FW400, FW800, gig-ethernet, HDMI, 802.11N, bluetooth, webcam and mic. (and integrated speakers that arn't half bad). S/PDIF that I'll have to convert from optical back to coax to run my old speakers.

They felt sorry for me upgrading the old P4 to win7. For the record, I did get it running, sound, video --64-meg Geforce2-MX (a miracle). As I was finishing my upgrade the friends stopped by and drop this monster on my desk. dual booting win7 and leopard. a sight to behold.

ohh, by the way, if you install win7, goto C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT to see the rest of the wallpaper for different regions. the elephant for (ZA = South Africa) is particularly impressive!

shockingly, the MSDN blog has nice primer on windows 7 secrets.

An Interesting Read

keith and i routinely have odd conversations...

one recent conversation was regarding how much the banking system isn't designed for the modern methods... or well pretty much anything.  

i was clicking around cleaning up my amazon wish list for not good reason other than adding a vacuum attachment to clean my keyboard and was reminded of a book that i want (i should just get it on my next amazon order instead of wishing for it... yes, i shall) anyways the author (have you totally forgotten how i started this post yet?) is a really smart guy that i admire and so i went looking at his web page. the web page is ugly, but has a lot of good stuff. including this rant about the modern banking system and also how he rewards people for finding errors in his book. 

Joule Thief

I've been looking for an ultra low forward voltage drop diode to use for a little project I've been working on (in my head) and so far, the best candidate is probably a mosfet-- DS junction. doing design work in your head eventually needs practical (working) designs to give motivation, check out this Joule Thief circuit to steal the last bit of juice from your battery, down to about 0.35V to power an LED. pretty snazzy huh? you can see if hooked up to a Peltier (called a seebeck when used as a source) at instructables. I miss the days of having the time to actually do fun stuff. we have alot of these TEC (thermo electric cooler) junctions at work, so I'm going to start harvesting out of scrap units for projects at home.

climbing

work update

I was reading over at postsecret.com and this post from them inspired me to NOT say anything about a possible change at work until its complete. I'll give everyone an update when the smoke clears. not that I would bad-mouth anyone at work, but other changes...

April Fools

Google has another new feature for gmail... autopilot.... hahahah i could really use this for students =)

randsinrepose

I do a little reading for my lunch hour time. I read the usual gadget blogs and tech news. I want to share with you my latest finding, http://www.randsinrepose.com. This software developer is a superb writer! for starters, check out an old article The Larry Test which talks about the underpinnings of an engineers mentality to never ever really be done. its well thought out, and straight forward, but when you get to the end I was left with a realization about myself that I had truly never considered. Randsinrepose may just be so good as to get a permanent link from nerdy.

check it out, I bet ALL of you will like it.

the icing on the cake? a nice little review of cloud computing and dropbox

better off ted

Have any of you guys seen better off ted? a new show over on ABC. the show is pretty hilarious and I had major flashbacks of my time with General Electric. ABC is TOTALLY making fun of NBC with this one. I particularly enjoyed the part of the into that makes fun of pretty much ever business arm of GE (you can almost see the Enron wind in one shot), and made reference to the very thing I had hanging on my wall for a while while employed there. for a time I had the slogan 'we bring good things to life' next a picture of the 1946 vulcan gun. for all my old friends still employed by the collective... check out better off ted.

gave in to a deal

after eyeing dad's 10" acer aspire one netbook over christmas and not thinking too much of it I saw an MSI wind this past weekend and was quite impressed.

Then I saw a craiglist spokane ad for a 'new in box acer aspire one 8.9" with 8gb sshd, 1GB ram' for $200.

Turns out it was a model about 3 months newer without linux, but with a 160gb HD and XP HOME

It was not only in the box, it had never been opened.  the ~1" smaller screen is noticible, but does not detrack too much from the functionality.  cheapest I think I could get this elsewhere would be before tax referbished at tiger direct for $240 or costco $300

I beleive the touchpad is aware of multiple fingers, as you use two fingers spreading or joining to zoom in and out (webbrowser) - pretty cool.  and draw a spiral from top right to middle of pad to activate scrolling from the pad.  I actually with is was more like a mac (GASP!) and it just had two finger scroll - mayber there is a hack.

long term, 20$ to boost the ram to 1.5 gb (max MB supports) and to a 32GB SS HD wiht 90MB read and 55MB write a second may be intersting.  I'm not in too big of a rush.  Really only thing it's missing is bluetooth and a tv tuner.  I've even got wireless mice and keyboard sets already that work just great (usb) and the tiny usb mouse that came with it works great.

specs AOA150-1555 black chasis

mechanical > chemical

I love having guests, it forces you to get the place in order and presentable! it really is a good thing, or i'd revert to my slobish ways like a college student.

I was put on bathroom detail.. i'm sure it was so I would be forced to come up with a solution to the hardwater ring. they sell all kinds of junk for this in the store. wimpy little things, and harsh chemicals that NEVER EVER work. I believe the only intent is to poison the family cat, and to challenge you to surviving chlorine fumes while cleaning.

I devised my own solution - the electrical engineers toilet brush. ok.. it really is more a mechanical solution, but since i'm an electrical engineer i get to take a little credit. I gave my wife a hard time (a chemist) that today... mechanical is greater than chemical.

sci fi = syfy

yeah, I didn't make that up.

the press release announcing the change confirms that SyFy is "phonetically identical" to Sci-Fi. Honestly, that was actually pointed out.