So I'm here at home, riding our Hurricane Gustov.  I'm far enough inland that I'm hoping I won't see much more than some wind & rain, with minimal impact to utility services (unlike Katrina).  A few days ago the media really started to wind up in preparation, and I noticed one of my Twitter accounts MPBOnline was really providing some useful information about shelters, gas stations, road & traffic conditions, and more.  Since then I've started following a few more people (iDeeDee, iellie, TbroOnline) affiliated with MPB and other agencies, and I've found them to generally be ahead of the local radio and major media as to the state of things.  They were the first to tell me about the contraflow conditions on i59 & I55.  They were the first to tell me about the gas Shortages in south Mississippi.  They've been giving regular updates on Gustav's strength, wind speed, and estimated landfall time.  I've not even really needed to watch the weather channel or local news, and they're covering it all.

So, it's been interesting getting more news (and more accurate news) about Gustav with Twitteriffic on my iPhone than on the TV.  And as an extra plus, if I lose power or cable internet access, I've got 3G to fall back on (as long as it's up).  New Media triumphs again.

Technorati Tags: hurricane, newmedia, gustav, twitter

Last week I talked about "I Want Sandy", so this week I'm gonna talk about another Web2.0 tool that I've been using alot: EverNote.  EverNote is, as the name suggests, a note taking service.  They offer a Website where you can view and edit your notes, as well as a Standalone application for Windows and Mac, and several Mobile platforms.  The Standalone app will let you index information without the web service, if you're uncomfortable sharing your information on the internet.

Information is easy to get into EverNote too! For starters you can simple fire up the app or go to the website and create a new note, and start typing.  The more interesting stuff happens with other means, tho.  There's an EverNote extension for FireFox where you can simply highlight text and click a button to send it to EverNote, images and all.  Also, you get a custom email address that you can send notes to to have them automatically entered as notes.  Plus, with the mobile application (I use the iPhone version) you can take pictures or write notes and have them automatically entered into the site. 

All of that is fairly routine tho.  The real power of evernote lies in the searching.  If you take a picture of something and send it to evernote, it will automatically search the image for Text and allow you to search on the text.  This really adds to the value of the service.  I've taken to using my iPhone to take pictures of all the notes and information sent home with the Kids from School, to make for easy searching.  Simply search for "august" in the "Kids" notebook I've created, and I see everything happening in August.  An example is below:

It's also trivial to extend this to cataloging Whiteboards at the office (where the handwriting will automatically be recognized), shipping labels, interesting books. The list goes on and on.  The One popular example they talk about is using it to catalog business cards.  I unfortunately have not had much luck with that, as the iPhone camera does fairly poorly at close-range.

The quality of the OCR is a bit spotty.  It requires a good high-contrast image, which can be difficult with the iPhone given it's poor low-light quality and slow sensors.  Also it searches for text in all orientations (right, up, down, etc) so it sometimes guesses wrong. One example is shown below, where I searched for "august" and it misrecognized a column of numbers.

So it's not perfect, but it's a far cry from nothing at all.  Also, EverNote can index documents like PDF's.  It doesn't support any kind of Preview, but you can send PDF's (I do it via Email) to EverNote and searches will then search the PDF contents! This is great for conference & technical papers which are always PDF's, and online magazines too!

EverNote offers a free service if you want to try it out.  They restrict you to 40Meg upload every month, which is quite alot of text and cameraphone pictures.  The premium service is a mere $45 a year, and offers 500Meg upload every month.  I've fully integrated EverNote into my organization & cataloging tools, and highly recommend it to anyone doing the same.  Where Sandy is great for scheduling, contacts, and short 1-liner notes, EverNote picks up the slack for anything bigger.

 

Technorati Tags: evernote, organization, web2.0

Oops.. I just now noticed that in the upgrade to Geeklog 1.5 I forgot to re-enable the gallery plugin I was using. 

Sorry about that, it's fixed now and the "Inmemoriam" link is back at the top.  Enjoy :)

About 6 months ago I realized that trying to manage work, home, and 2 kids is a scheduling nightmare.  Especially as the school year wraps up and you've got school programs, dance recitals, half days, parties, work conferences, PTA meetings, and so much going on that even if you can remember it you have to master astral projection to actually go to all of it. My decicion then was to simply start carrying a planner.

After a few happy months of finally having some way of managing all this, I started to wonder if there's a better way.  I spend all day working on and around computers, surely there's some computerized way that will work for me. I've tried PDA's and various other tools before but never found one that worked to my satisfaction.  Finally, a few months ago I stumbled across "I Want Sandy".

I've been amazed at how easy I was able to work Sandy into my flow, and with my new iPhone I've found it even more indispensable.  Sandy works almost entirely by email, turning your inbox into a scheduling system.  Upon registration you're given a custom email address that you can use to communicate with her and send her simple emails like "remember Dental Appointment september 11 8am" or "Remind me to take out the trash tuesday night @weekly", and she'll parse the text and put it on your calendar.  Items can be added, searched, edited, and removed entirely via email.  Also, every morning you get a nicely formatted "Daily Digest" showing all your upcoming appointments for the day, plus anything else you've deemed important enough to be included.

But that's not all.  Email is the main form of communicating with her, but she also integrates nicely with Twitter & Jott, allowing you to do the same operations via those interfaces.  Also, she can do more than just appointments. She can understand and remember URL bookmarks and Contact information, and just plain notes.  It's all stored in a nice searchable way via their website,  and can easily be requested remotely via any of the means above (Email, Twitter, Jott). 

While Sandy's website leaves some to be desired, she can export all of your information as RSS or iCal feeds making it easy to add her calendar to your favorite tool (Google Calendar in my case).  This way I can easily get a quick look at what's going on for the next week or month.

So Sandy's done alot to help me keep organized.  Rael Dornfest, lead developer of Sandy & my old blogging tool Blosxom, has done a fantastic job and I look forward to seeing what tricks Sandy learns next!  I really loved using Jott to talk to Sandy, but it seems Jott has decided to start charging for that ability (Currently at $4 a month), so I've had to stop using that.

But Sandy's not the only tool I'm using in the Web2.0 space to stay organized. Come back next week for more information on some other tools!

Technorati Tags: iwantsandy, productivity, gtd

I post this here (and on Mosio, and linked to on Twitter) in hopes of an answer.  We see these things towed by 18-wheelers up and down I-20, but don't have the slightest idea what they are.  They have no company identification, and no other identifying marks that we've found.  Searching google for "big plastic container" doesn't help much.  Any ideas?

 

 

UPDATE: Wow.. Took less than 20 minutes.. Thanks you interwebs!!  The answer seems to be a "Wind Turbine Nacelle" (from multiple sources).  Given that these were heading West on I20 through Mississippi and there's a huge Wind Farm under construction in Texas, it makes sense.  Plus, I found a great pic of one of these in action at the AWEO Website.

Technorati Tags: unknown, mystery

So, I figure it's about time to do the quick review.  I was one of the lucky people to get an iPhone 3g on release day, after a short wait in the line outside.  I got the 8Gig version, and i've had it for a few weeks now.  I even had the perfect opportunity to test it as 2 days after I bought it I left for a week in Seattle for the HPCMP User's Group Conference.  So I spent that week trying out various bells and whistles, and since then I've pushed it even further.  So, what's the verdict?

What I like:

• The App Store - The ability to download apps and install them on the phone is great, and ability to do it for free is fantastic.. The ability to get useful and fun apps that actually look like desktop software and not like old VT100 terminals is the real impressive part.
• GPS & Location Awareness - The ability to see your location on google maps at pretty much any given time is great, especially if you're a traveler (This feature saved my butt several times in Seattle).  Pull up maps, let it find you while you type in "borders" and then you get a blue dot where you are, and red dots showing all the nearby borders bookstores.  And lots of other apps are location-aware too, so you can Geotag your photos or Tweets.
• Data - Lots of phones have data support, and lots of them have websurfing ability, but (in my knowledge) the iPhone is the only one that rivals a desktop.  I almost never use my laptop or desktop anymore, since I can use a real browser (complete with AJax and JavaScript support) on my iPhone.  It integrates perfectly with Google Mail (unlike Blackberries), and everything works seamlessly.

What I don't like:

• Instability - The new iPhone 2.0 firmware is simply buggy.  I've had the keyboard wack out on me several times, thinking it's horizontal when it's vertical, or simply disappearing.  The only solution i've found: reboot.
• Location problems - The GPS isn't terribly accurate in urban areas, I've had it "lock on" (no blue circle, just a pin) and then float up to 2 blocks while i'm standing still.  Also, the location features seem to simply "stop" sometimes, and the only way to get them working again is reboot.
• Signal Strength - The iPhone doesn't seem to have a very good antenna.  My friends with Razr's often still have a bar or 2 while i'm staring at No Service.
• No background apps - To preserve battery life, Apple doesn't allow any App Store application to run in the background.  This makes Instant Messaging a no-go, unless you JailBreak.  Hopefully this won't be much of a problem when the new 2.1 firmware with Push Notifications comes out.
• Poor Camera Quality - the CMOS sensor on the camera is slooooow. This makes taking non-blurry photos almost impossible.
• Battery Life - yeah, it's all over the net.. Read it there.. synopsis: Charge daily for usage around home, Charge 2x daily when traveling.

But, it's still simply a fantastic device.  Being able to send/recieve email anywhere, use twitter, surf the net, see my google calendar, update Sandy, listen to music (either iTunes or Pandora), GPS Locate, get Directions, etc.  It's simply fantastic.  I highly recommend it for anyone.

Technorati Tags: iphone, review

While I was at UGC08 in Seattle last week, I got the chance to do some reading. Here's the 2 books I finally knocked off my list:

First I read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  It's a story set in the future after a devastating attack on earth by the "Buggers", an alien insectoid race that nearly killed us all.  The only way we survived was through the legendary attack of one man.  Now we leave under constant fear of another invasion, so the government analyzes and recruits potential soldiers at very young (single digit) ages, and puts them through intricate battle games to prepare them for war.  The book is the story of one exceptionally talended kid named Andrew "Ender" Wiggins.  It's a great book with a several good twists toward the end.  There are several sequels to the book, but I'm not sure if there is really any temporal order to them.

On the flight back I read William Gibson's Neuromancer.  It's an interesting cross between Blade Runner and Snow Crash, a distant future where the "Matrix" ( a virtual world ala the MetaVerse) is the core of all computers in the world.  A former elite hacker who fell victim to a virus that shattered his nervous system is recruited by a strange man to pickup a new terminal and do 1 more job.  But it all spins out of control when he figures out who his boss is working for, and meets the other people involved. It's a very dark book, with alot of far-fetched lingo and ideas.  It's a great sci-fi run through various exotic locales on earth, in orbit, and in the "Matrix".

I've heard alot about both books over the years, they're both considers somewhat "required reading" for SciFi buffs. 

Technorati Tags: book, neuromancer, endersgame

Last night, Laura and I went to see The Dark Knight at the local Malco.  1 word: AWESOME.

Heath Ledger's performance is everything they say.  His character, the Joker, has fantastic dialog and monologues, which you have to attribute to the writing staff.  But the mannerisms, the voice, the laugh,  that's all Heath Ledger, and he does amazingly well.  From the initial "Pencil Trick " all the way to the final showdown, he's an psychopathic anarchist with no regard for anything but chaos, and it's completely believable.

The one actor I have not heard much about is Aaron Eckhart who plays Harvey Dent, Gotham's new District Attorney.  He has an equally impressive showing as he slowly turns from Gotham's White Knight into Two-Face. 

The entire movie is fantastic, and a great sequel to Batman Begins.  Plus, it's got trailers for Watchmen and the new Terminator Salvation movie starring Batman himself as John Connor. 

Technorati Tags: batman, movie, darkknight, heathledger

Found this via Jeff Freeman's Blog..  

1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

If you want to do this again, you'll hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes over and over again.

3 - Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days" http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your debut album.

I tried it, and I'm impressed..  I think I'ld buy my Debut Album.

Band Name: Atsuhime Album Name: Be Fired with Enthusiasm Cover art  found here

Technorati Tags: fun, album

This week at work I've been lucky enough to get a new project.  I've been attempting to get a Nintendo Wiimote to work with a Linux system so that we can use it as the new input device for our Renderwall.  I was given (temporarily) a Laptop with RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 (OId, I know) with full root priviledges (but no network access) to work on.

I got a DLink DBT-120 for the Bluetooth communication, and an el-cheapo wireless sensor bar.  Plugging in the DBT-120 worked magically without any intervention from me (Linux hardware support has come a looong way).  I pretty easily got the 'hcitool scan' to show the Nintendo Wiimote.  Next step was to actually compile something usable for it.

I finally settled on CWiid (At http://abstrakraft.org/cwiid/).  It has a good selection of demos and an API.  To get it to compile, I did have to upgrade Flex (compiled from source) and install the bluez-libs-devel RPM to get the bluetooth headers.  With that in place, everything works just great!

As a final feather in my cap, I setup wminput.  it's a simple daemon that will let the Wiimote inputs emulate (via uinput) a Mouse & Keyboard, so I was able to use it to interact with our openGL demos without any code changes.  It's all pretty slick and pretty easy to use.

So, where to from here?  Well, I'm going to build a simple GLUT-type wrapper to work with the Cwiid API, so that we can get low-level access to the LED's, battery information, and tracking data.  With that, I should be able to pretty easily gather a set of demos that we can use to show visitors!  I'll post back more as I get more stuff working!

Technorati Tags: wiimote, linux, programming, cwiid