Google Maps recently updated their API key system so you can use the same key within subfolders. And all I can say is thank f’ing GOD. Was so annoying that if you make a map and put it on your blog that it would need a separate key when viewing the map from an archive/month page.
All posts by Shawn
Matrix Ping Pong
Would be ideal if the video quality was better, but it’s still cool… 🙂
Frog In Joaquin Phoenix’s hair
I saw this on TV last night (I wish I had the video for this, but I can’t find it anywhere yet). This is what Joaquin Phoenix had to say to a reporter while doing an interview for his new movie I Walk The Line…
“Do I have a large frog in my hair? … Something’s crawling out of my scalp.” Despite reassurances from the reporter, the actor replied, “No, but I feel it. I’m not worried about the looks. I’m worried about the sensation of my brain being eaten… What did you ask me?”
It was pretty funny seeing it live. Hopefully the video will turn up online soon.
“Wrongful Life” Lawsuit
This is interesting… this appears to be the first “wrongful life” suit… A disabled girl (blind and deaf) is suing her mom’s doctor for letting her be born into a “lifetime of suffering”.
I’m Psychic
You want to know why my stock market prediction is going to come true? Because I’m psychic… all I have to do is think about getting more Xserves, and this morning someone from Apple’s enterprise business unit called me asking if I would be interested in any Xserves if they would give me a discount (they never have called me before).
Stock Market Prediction
I think the stock market is about to start a pretty big run up until at least the end of the year (bigger gains than we have seen all year). Tech stocks are going to be the industry that is the driving force for this bull run. We’ll see how my psychic prediction is come January 1, 2006.
Quad Processor Xserve
I really wish Apple would update the Xserve to use dual core processors (for a total of 4 cores) like their PowerMac towers because I need another Xserve (or 2) and I’m not sure how much longer I can wait for it.
Splinter Cell 4
I’m not a huge gamer, but once in awhile it’s fun to play a game… For example I played Splinter Cell 3, and it was damn good game. 🙂
Anyway, someone posted some screenshots from Splinter Cell 4 that look pretty amazing…
//h0dge.blogsome.com/2005/11/13/splinter-cell-4-to-take-place-in-prison/
This might be a game that would make me actually want to buy an Xbox 360 (Splinter Cell 4 isn’t due to come out until March, 2006). The couple games that look interesting (Gears of War, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell 4, Halo 3) to me for Xbox 360 all come out February and March of 2006, so it looks like I’ll just wait to get an Xbox 360.
Sony Violates Copyright With Own Copyright Protection System
Sony is in all sorts of trouble when they were recently exposed as to installing rootkits on user’s PCs without their permission in order to “protect the copyrights of their CDs” which can’t be uninstalled. That in itself is enough to get Sony in pretty hot water.
Hackers are now using backdoors in the rootkits to attack/take control of people’s PCs. Oh boy… I’m sure Sony loves that too.
Now, the funniest part… Sony’s rootkit was compiled with the LAME music encoder inside it. LAME is licensed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), which requires those who use it attribute the original software and publish some of the code they write to use the library. Sony hasn’t done any of this, which means Sony’s dangerous rootkit software that “protects its copyrights” is a copyright violation by Sony in itself. hehe
Google Analytics
If you own a website or a blog, you need to be using this (really). It’s basically just Urchin 6 (Google bought the company earlier this year), but Google is offering it as a free service now (I think it was like $1,000/month or something before Google bought it).
Download Movies
Speaking of downloading movies, I wish Apple would hurry up and deploy a full blown Apple Movie Store (they obviously have the ability to do video with the iPod Video and their ability to sell TV shows). If they sold DVDs you could download for $10, it would be the end of retail DVDs and DVD rentals (not unlike what the Apple Music Store did to CDs).
As it is, I never rent DVDs (I always buy) because I’m too lazy to make two trips to Blockbuster.
Quote:
On a conference call with analysts last week, Steve Jobs, who serves as chief executive for both Apple and Pixar, acknowledged that it still takes too long to download feature-length films over the Internet.
On a conference call with analysts last week, Steve Jobs, who serves as chief executive for both Apple and Pixar, acknowledged that it still takes too long to download feature-length films over the Internet.
Too long to download? That’s the only holdup? Gay.
By my calculations, if they used their H.264 compression algorithm, it would take about 20 minutes to download a full length movie. That’s not too bad if you ask me.
Kill Bill’s Browser
Here’s a pretty funny site telling people the benefits of switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox…
Quote:
You’ll only see porn when you want to.
Sick of seeing pornographic pop-ups all over your computer while you’re helping your daughter with a research project? Since Firefox blocks pop-ups, you won’t get tons of porn in your face when you’re least expecting it. On the flip side, since Firefox stops spyware from taking over your computer, there will be nothing to slow you down when you go and look for porn.
Loeb and Loeb/MPAA Extortion
Got an interesting call from a law firm (Loeb & Loeb) representing the MPAA today. They want me to settle out of court and pay $2,500 for some movie I never downloaded (and ironically enough I actually own the DVD). Of course, I declined their settlement offer and told them I would rather let it go to court.
They are TOTALLY extorting money from people because when I told her I would rather let it go to court, she started to get rather huffy…
Her: You understand that defending this in court will cost you much more than $2,500 in attorney fees, right?
Me: Yep.
Her: We are able to get a default judgement against you which will be substantially more than $2,500.
Me: Okay.
Her: I will let them know to go ahead and file a federal lawsuit against you.
Me: Okay, sounds good.
Me: Yep.
Her: We are able to get a default judgement against you which will be substantially more than $2,500.
Me: Okay.
Her: I will let them know to go ahead and file a federal lawsuit against you.
Me: Okay, sounds good.
If you *really* think you have a case against me, why are you “letting me off” for $2,500? You can make much more with a court ruling.
Someone has to stand up to these clowns… their scare tactics make them sounds pretty foolish IMO. First of all, I would rather spend $100,000 and not pay them $2,500 than to just give them $2,500 (it’s about the principle).
Secondly, it should be interesting to see how they are able to get a default judgement against me. I would have to fail to appear in court after receiving a summons. As long as I actually GET a summons, I will be there. Even if they go the route of Winn and Sims (filing a proof of service that never happened), it can be reversed once I find out about it.
Housewife Of The Year
Well, it looks like Jessica Simpson won the coveted “Housewife Of The Year” awards this year. Although her cover shot on Rolling Stone magazine looks like it might have been ripped off from this Asian guy.
The Google Car Stereo
Google wants to be the center of the information universe, so how long do you think it will be before they make a car stereo (which is much more than a standard car stereo of course)?
It can be done now if you want to hack it together, but it would be nice if it was an “all in one” setup. For example, you could take this car stereo (which is really a full blown computer). Add a USB Bluetooth adapter to it and you could use your cell phone as an Internet gateway wirelessly (you can still make/receive calls while using it as an Internet gateway). Higher speed cell phone Internet access in the coming months is only going to make this more attractive.
This would pretty much make all existing navigation systems outdated because map and navigation data would be fed in realtime (based on Google Maps/Earth), and it would be trivial for Google to add live traffic data to Google Maps (not sure why they haven’t already done it). That could also put the XM NavTraffic service out of business (at least heavily cut into it).
Google’s already doing a “mini” navigation system for people with GPS enabled cell phones with their Google Mobile application.
Besides all that stuff, you could stream Internet radio stations, pull up music via iTunes, access your iPod, or anything else a normal computer with Internet access could do.
If someone at Google reads this, and decides to make it their “20% free time project” (this would be my project if I worked at Google), I want one when you are done! heh
People Getting Quad PowerMacs Already?!?
Uhm… people are reporting that they have been receiving their 10Ghz PowerMacs early (as in they already have them in hand). One guy said his estimated ship date was November 29, and he already has it.
So uhm… where’s mine? I just checked my order, and the estimated ship date is November 21 (still).
The monitor I got for it is lonely sitting on my floor with no computer to mate with. 🙁
Windows On x86 Macintosh
I know it’s really not news, but Apple recent filed from patent applications that show Mac OS X, Windows and Linux all running on a single computer (natively, without emulation). That will be nice if I can finally dump my Windows machines I use to test stuff on and just have one machine that can do it all.
Of course it won’t happen until next year, and only on Apple’s x86 Macintosh machines.
Hopefully Windows worms/viruses can be kept out of the Macintosh environment. 🙂
My Dream Cell Phone
Motorola announced two new cell phones today based on the RAZR V3.
The RAZR V3i is basically the same phone, with the addition of iTunes (big deal… I don’t care) and a microSD card slot (which I *do* care about). More memory is always good.
The other one is the RAZR v3c, which will give Verizon a RAZR phone offering for the first time. I don’t personally care all that much since I use Cingular, but one thing I *did* notice is it supports Verizon’s EV-DO high speed network. So uhm, why not put out a GSM based RAZR that supports HSDPA since Cingular is now rolling it out?
So my dream phone would be someone taking the new V3i (because of the microSD slot, not because of iTunes), add HSDPA (3G) support and throw in a GPS. I never thought a GPS on a cell phone was all that useful until yesterday when Google released a new Google Mobile app (which is really cool, and 10x cooler if you have a GPS in your phone).
Cingular HSDPA Network
So I’ve been poking around this afternoon, and I’ve been finding reports about Cingular’s 3G (HSDPA) network rollout. Supposedly they started the rollout a few weeks ago, and it offers 400-700k data speeds.
The problem? Their website says nothing about it and even if it did, there are not currently any HSDPA enabled phones available… nice! 🙂
MP3 Ringtones
Why do people pay $2 or $3 for a cellphone ringtone of a song? I don’t get it because most cellphones these days lets you just use an MP3 as a ringtone. Get a freeware/shareware application that lets you cut a certain part of a ringtone (no point in having a 5 minute ringtone) as well as down-sample the bitrate to make it smaller, and viola! You can make your own ringtones with music you already own. Or if you don’t own it, you can buy it for $0.99 from the Apple music store (cheaper than a ringtone and you get the full MP3).
I’m a Mac user, so I use Amadeus II for the task.
1 Million Keywords
Well this one is a pretty big milestone I think… My first tool, the keyword tracker broke 1,000,000 keywords being tracked for users (that’s only current keywords and does not include deleted ones).
People seem to like it… hehe Not bad for a punk. 🙂
Why Chargers, Why?
The Chargers won the game today (barely), but why do they insist on giving me a heart attack every week???
Bastards.
LaDainian Tomlinson scored all 4 Charger touchtowns, not bad I guess.
Geolocation Maps
Based on some of the stuff I did for this, I made a system that can be used by any site (just copy/paste a tiny bit of HTML code and it automagically works).
Anyway, if you want to see where in the world people are from that visit this blog (or want to use it yourself), click here.
Home Automation Checklist
Okay, I need to start making a list of things I want to be able to control from the home automation system for my house… So I’m just going to use this blog entry for that. If anyone can think of anything I’ve forgotten, please leave it as a comment and I’ll update this post as necessary…
- Lights (indoor, outdoor and landscape)
- Some door locks (front door, server room, office)
- Heat and air conditioning
- Music to any room (or outside)
- Video (all TVs, central PVR/movie server?)
- Fireplaces
- Waterfall
- Sprinklers
- Spa
- Cameras
- Security
- Windows (open/close windows, shades up/down, electrochromic maybe)
I’m Gonna Waste Your Time
When you get crazy people calling you trying to sell you something, I always try to keep them on the phone as long as possible so they get more annoyed than I am that they called in the first place.
Today for example some dude called wanting to collect bad debt that people owe me. Except I told him in the beginning that no one owes me anything.
Him: I’ll send my guys to the homes of people who owe you money and confront them face to face, blah, blah, blah…
Me: Cool, the debt collection posse… But no one owes me anything.
Him: I’m looking at your Better Business Bureau record for your company, and it shows you offer lines of credit. If that’s not the case, should I have them remove that?
Me: Sure.
Him: Huh? Really? You seriously want me to change your BBB record?
Me: I don’t care, because we don’t even have a BBB profile, so whatever you “change” isn’t going to affect me.
Him: Okay, so how much would you say your worst customer owe you? I mean a ballpark figure…
Me: Zero dollars.
Him: What about the guy that hasn’t paid his bill, how much does he owe you?
Me: Hold on, let me check my system… […wait about 2 minutes…] Zero dollars for him too.
Him: All businesses give terms of credit, so some of your customers haven’t paid.
Me: Really? Who? I’m curious where you heard all businesses give lines of credit though, was it my “BBB profile”?
Him: I only get paid when we collect money from your deadbeat customers. Wouldn’t you like some money?
Me: Yeah, I would like some money. I would be a little worried about where the money came from though since none of our customers owe us any money. But if you can find some money, I’ll be happy to split it with you.
Him: So how much did you say your worst customer owes you again?
Me: That would be zero dollars (plus or minus five dollars).
Me: Cool, the debt collection posse… But no one owes me anything.
Him: I’m looking at your Better Business Bureau record for your company, and it shows you offer lines of credit. If that’s not the case, should I have them remove that?
Me: Sure.
Him: Huh? Really? You seriously want me to change your BBB record?
Me: I don’t care, because we don’t even have a BBB profile, so whatever you “change” isn’t going to affect me.
Him: Okay, so how much would you say your worst customer owe you? I mean a ballpark figure…
Me: Zero dollars.
Him: What about the guy that hasn’t paid his bill, how much does he owe you?
Me: Hold on, let me check my system… […wait about 2 minutes…] Zero dollars for him too.
Him: All businesses give terms of credit, so some of your customers haven’t paid.
Me: Really? Who? I’m curious where you heard all businesses give lines of credit though, was it my “BBB profile”?
Him: I only get paid when we collect money from your deadbeat customers. Wouldn’t you like some money?
Me: Yeah, I would like some money. I would be a little worried about where the money came from though since none of our customers owe us any money. But if you can find some money, I’ll be happy to split it with you.
Him: So how much did you say your worst customer owes you again?
Me: That would be zero dollars (plus or minus five dollars).
This basically goes around and around in a circle for about 20 minutes, finally he decides to ask me a question that I’m supposed to answer “Yes” to so he can say something smart and hang up on me. But he couldn’t even trick me into saying “Yes”. haha
Him: Let me ask you something… do you like chicken wings?
Me: No, not really.
Him: Do you like Hooters?
Me: I’m assuming not because I have no idea what you are talking about.
Him: Okay, do you like fishing?
Me: No, not really.
Him: Auuuuggghhh! <click>
Me: No, not really.
Him: Do you like Hooters?
Me: I’m assuming not because I have no idea what you are talking about.
Him: Okay, do you like fishing?
Me: No, not really.
Him: Auuuuggghhh! <click>
I win. 🙂
My 30″ Monitor Is Here
Okay, this kind of sucks… I now have the most bad ass computer monitor you can get sitting in my office (a 30″ Apple Ciniema HD), but I have no computer I can actually USE it with. hahaha
I ordered a new computer specifically for the monitor (the monitor was a gift/bonus), but I’m not going to be getting the new computer for about 3 weeks. This sucks… I’m now a kid not being able to play with my new toy. 🙂
Here’s a picture of it (CD jewel case to show scale)…
Google Maps API Is Pimp
It’s not the first time I used the Google Maps API, but every time I do something with it, I’m reminded about how damn cool it is.
It ended up being relatively trivial to show where in the world all the people currently visiting the forum are at in the world. Added some color coded pins and made the pins clickable (you can also automatically fly to the location if you have Google Earth installed).
In truth, the hardest part really had nothing to do with the API itself… it was making a caching mechanism for geolocation data on the IP address (no point in querying the database for all IPs for every page view), so it just queries for IPs that are new since the last time someone looked at the page.
Check it out: //forums.digitalpoint.com/usermap.php
1kW Computer?
Rumors have been floating around that the quad processor PowerMac I ordered comes with a 1,000 watt power supply. I sure hope it doesn’t actually *use* 1kW while it’s on, because if it does, I might cause some California brownouts again. 🙂
Speaking of which, I hope the operating system has the ability to turn off CPUs (or just lower the frequency for them) on demand.
Winn & Sims Employs The Borg?
I think that Winn & Sims employees have a single collective conscious known as “The Borg”. How else can you possibly explain three employees independently making identical statements on their personal websites?
Quote:
“Hey Everyone! These are just a few of my law firm links, including my favorite Law Firm: Winn and Sims, APC. I just love working for them!”
“Hey Everyone! These are just a few of my law firm links, including my favorite Law Firm: Winn and Sims, APC. I just love working for them!”
A truly heartfelt testimonial as quoted from Aric, Lauren and Stephanie’s personal websites.
These three must be Borg probes masquerading as human beings, and you better believe I’m going to be reporting this to Star Fleet Command so they can start planning for the full scale Borg invasion. I wonder if you need a green card to work here on earth when you are an intergalactic alien?
Google Shares Up $14 Today
Google’s stock closed at $372.14 today (up $13.97 for the day), which I thankfully I own some shares. I wonder how much higher it’s going to go before they announce a stock split. Even as it is now, it seems like a 10:1 stock split would be “reasonable”. It’s not the first day that their market cap was over $100B, but they are a pretty solid $100B company right now (with $4B to spare). Coincidentally, Google’s market cap is exactly twice what Yahoo is worth. 🙂
The only stock that has done better in the last year is Apple. Considering I own that too (for longer than a year), maybe I should stop being a programmer and be a stock broker. haha
Cell Phone As A Flashlight
Have you ever used your cell phone as a flashlight? It’s not terribly bright, but just bright enough you can see stuff if it’s pitch dark (for example moving around your house in the middle of the night without tripping over stuff).
It gives off a faint/eery glow that lets you see about 2 feet in front of you. Someone should make a movie about a boogieman that you can see in the dark only with your cell phone light. It would be suspenseful for no other reason than you can only see 2 feet around you.
Oh, and whoever makes that movie, give me some money for the idea too… thanks.
Live Email Validation
Here’s a handy bit of PHP code that will take the email variable, lookup the mail server for the domain, log into the mail server and see if it will accept delivery for that address.[code=php](.*)/’, $_REQUEST[’email’], -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE|PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
$email = array_pop ($split);
$split = explode (“@”, $email);
$domain = $split[1];
getmxrr ($domain, $a, $b);
if ($a) {
foreach ($a as $key => $val) {
$c[$b[$key]] = $val;
}
ksort ($c);
} else {
$c[0] = $domain;
}
$fp = fsockopen (array_shift($c), 25, $errno, $errstr, 30);
$return = fgets ($fp, 1024);
fputs ($fp, “helo none.com\r\n”);
$return = fgets ($fp, 1024);
fputs ($fp, “mail from:
$return = fgets ($fp, 1024);
fputs ($fp, “rcpt to:<" . $email . ">\r\n”);
$return = fgets ($fp, 1024);
fputs ($fp, “quit”);
fclose($fp);
if (substr($return, 0, 3) > 250) {
echo “Bad email”;
} else {
echo “Good email”;
}
?>[/code]Okay, okay… the truth is I just got done adapting the GeSHi syntax highlighter into a WordPress plug-in and wanted to make sure it worked, so I needed to post some code of some sort. 🙂
Five Hole Golf Course
I also saw the first rough sketches of a 5 hole golf course for my house. It looks pretty damn cool if I do say so myself. It even has a pond in the middle (although I didn’t see a golf cart path). 🙂
The front of the house is going to have a “moat” too, with a waterfall feeding it So you will have to drive over the moat to get to the garage and walk over a bridge to get to the front door. I think this is going to be a pretty cool house when it’s all said and done. 🙂
Fire Department Doesn’t Like My Pool House
The fire department doesn’t like the fact that I want to put a pool house against the edge of the slope off the pad (even if it’s 100% non-combustable materials). Now we are going to see if maybe they will be happy if we extend the pad in that area 15′ out using a stepped retaining wall.
The fire department is the man, and they are out to get me! (hehe just kidding)
Sub-400 Alexa Ranking
I know that Alexa numbers really are pointless, but it’s still fun to watch when you get below 10,000 or so.
The 3 month average dropped below 400 for the first time (389 specifically), which means only 388 domains are more trafficked than digitalpoint.com. According to Alexa’s top 500 list, we just passed MTV.com 🙂
//www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?y=t&url=digitalpoint.com