November 19th, 2008|3:30pm.
So, you know how you're supposed to back things up on your computer before you make major changes? Yea, there's a reason for that. I came home from class last night and thought I'd quickly upgrade my MacBook Pro to Leopard then spend the rest of the night leisurely playing with Delicious Library.
This was not the case. In my infinite foresight, I forgot to back up things on my Mac before starting this upgrade. Things hit a snag. The OSX partition became upbootable. There was some reformatting. Some complete loss of data. Things got a little crazy near the end. Long story short, I lost everything on my Mac, but now have Leopard installed. This sucks, but most of the code I had on there was already up on a server somewhere, I probably lost some Photoshop files that I would have liked to have around, and I have to restart my Penny Arcade Adventures game from the beginning now. Oh well. At least this reminded me to update my backups for my desktop (which I want to do some serious upgrades to soon).
I got everything up and running by about 1:30 last night. Tonight will be spent reinstalling apps and trying to find the desktop wallpaper I had before. It was pretty sweet.
HCI Nerdary!
November 14th, 2008|5:07pm.
So this week during the first half of my class we got to go over to the Microsoft office downtown and play with the Surface they had there. (I wrote a review about it for Team Hamster Hat!) I had read a bit about it when it first came out, so it was cool to get to play with one in real life.
Then on Wednesday I went to an IxDA meeting (an interactive design organization that I have been attending on and off) hosted at Motorola (that takes me back...). The topic was visualizing web dashboards on mobile devices. What that really meant was "how best to turn MySpace and Facebook into software for a bunch of phones."
There was a lot of talk about pressure from branded partners (MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, etc) to keep certain features and certain characteristics on the mobile implementations of their products, which seemed like a frustrating position for developers to be in. Also, I understand the pressure for more mobile device manufactures to do this with Apple have such success with their app store. But here's my issue with this whole concept. It's bad and unmaintainable! Sure, as an interface designer I see the benefit of making a custom application to work best with whatever platform you're trying to run on, but as a software developer, the idea of turning a web page into a bunch of individually maintained programs is a nightmare! What happens when Facebook adds a new feature that all their "official" interfaces need to have. This could be 20 separate programs that need to be updated (by the developers) and installed (by the users). It's just not going to happen. Versions will get abandoned as the amount of "supported" platforms grows out of control. The point of these "Web 2.0ish" sites is to use websites more like applications, not the other way around.
The point of websites is their ubiquity! To turn a web page into an application is taking a step back. I understand that not every phone has a browser that can play nice with all webpages and take full advantage of all their functionality, but trying to solve this by branching the page off into individual pieces of software for every phone platform seems like a terrible way to solve this. Why not develop better browsers for your platforms?! Ones designed to render killer features in the webpages that you wish support!
Apple may be setting a bad example by infulencing other device providers to turn webpages into software, but at least they have the good sense (and influence) to make MySpace build and maintian their own application! If MySpace wants to add a feature they add it themselves and they have to conform to the design guidelines set by Apple (one benifit of Apple's infelxable obession with controle).
Code Monkey Like You
November 10th, 2008|10:56pm.
Well, after a busy week, I've had another long lapse in blogging. Since I've been back in the office at Risetime I've had a lot of project thrown at me and it's making for a little longer days at the office. Not all of my busy schedule has been bad, though. Band practice got moved from Thursday to Monday (parent/teacher conferences affect your schedule when your drummer is an English teacher) so Chris got us all tickets to this side show at the Metro called The Most Interesting Show In The World. It was pretty cool. I saw a man balance a running lawn mower on his face while people threw heads of lettuce at it. Also a man stuck a spoon in his nose.
Following no chronological order at all, the previous weekend was Halloween. Russ, Katie, Kyle, and Jessica came out and some how we ended up downtown at a fancy club where we had to "know someone" to get the bouncer to let us in (fortunately, I actually knew someone!). It was pretty fun and I got to wear footy pajamas and half a child's dinosaur costume out in public with minimal judgement from the rest of the population.
On the following Tuesday (election day) I went out to Grant Park after class to check out the Obama rally. It was pretty cool to hang out and watch the election results with all those people. It felt like a sporting event.
Last Friday Mike introduced me to the song Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton. Since then I haven't been able to get it out of my head. It's starting to effect my personal and professional life. I'm worried about how long I can go with out singing it loudly at work. I wrote a review of it for Team Hamster Hat.
Ooooo! Also the site I finally launched the site I was working on with Juli! She did all the pretty front end stuff and I made all the gear turn behind the scenes. Check it out!
What's in store for me this week? Well on Friday I'm going to try to go see The Hold Stead at The Riv and on Saturday The American Autumn is playing a show at Just For Fun (oh yea! another roller rink show!), you should come check it out.
Monday Blog-o-Rama Update
October 27th, 2008|3:43pm.
So it looks like it's been a little while since I last posted something here. I wish I had been doing more interesting things so that I would have a better excuse for my neglect and more content for this post, but alas, I've mainly been just busy with normal stuff.
The band is going well, we're starting to write again, while regrouping for our recording plans. It feels good to write again and it will be nice to play some new stuff at our upcoming shows.
I'm back to working from my office in the loop for work. It worked out well that I'm back to taking public transportation about the time of year when scootering is starting to seem like to cold an option. When I got back to the office for the first time my desk was exactly how I had left it. Absolutely covered in papers. I have no idea what most of them were for. I threw most of them out. I did keep all the stupid drawings on post it notes I have all over, though. They seemed important. I'm pretty settled in now and I'm enjoying taking the train to work. It's nice to have more time to read. I've been getting into Christopher Moore books lately. He's got a very good dry sense of humor and his stories are fun, light reads.
Last Wednesday we did the Mario Kart experiment I had planned for Team Hamster Hat. I still need to crunch the data and do the write up for that. Maybe I'll get to that tonight. I'm excited to finally have a Science! article to put up. We still need a steady flow of material for that site. Jeff, Bryan, and I have been writing almost everything lately and we would love to have other people write some reviews. I'd like to have at least one new post every week day.
So what's everybody going to be for Halloween?
I'm Now In It For The Money
October 17th, 2008|3:14pm.
So with things progressing nicely on Team Hamster Hat I decided to try out some ads on the site. I had been following Ryan North's ad service, Project Wonderful, and it seemed like a cool idea for small sites that don't have millions of page view a day (alas, Team Hamster Hat does not yet get millions of page views a day). So far it seems really nice. Due to our relatively low traffic right now, we're not making a ton of money, but it's at least doing something. The service works by letting advertisers bid for your ad space and you can set the starting bid. More popular sites will warrant higher bids. This ad service will also pay out at a much lower amount ($10) than Google AdSense ($100), so for those of us not making much, this is nice. I think the ads aren't too distracting and it's something fun to play around with. This is the first step to becoming a rich internet mogul, I can feel it!
Also while I was meeting with a coworker at my desk today he happened to read a post it note I had laying around which read:
- I like your beard.
- I have a beard!? What's your angle woman!?
[crude drawing of a hamster]
- We should get some tacos. A lot of tacos.
The coworker did not even try to ask for an explanation. In my defense this was simply a script I had written out for a remix of a panel from one of Mike's comics. And a crude drawing of a hamster.
You of Eye Trip
October 13th, 2008|2:15pm.
So this weekend was apparently homecoming at U of I. My old roommates, Had and Jen, knew of this (because they are much better alumni than me) and planned a road trip down to Champaign to tailgate for this momentous event. As I am a big fan of adventures, taco dip, and drinking outside I made the quick decision to hop in the car with them after work on Friday and head down to the ol' alma mater.
Upon arrival, the girls wanted to make the rest of their food for the tailgating, so I went wandering around campus. While walking down Green Street, I noticed my buddy (and former roommate) Moses doing a radio show from the front window of the campus radio station. I got them to let me in and hung out there for while with a bunch of hip hop kids. That was pretty cool. Then I wandered out to say hi to Connie, a friend from my trip to Washington DC. It was really good to catch up with her.
I got up relatively early the next morning to join up with everybody near the stadium for some respectable early morning drinking and some quality grilling. The weather was great and it was nice to just hanging out outside and relax. I even ran into Laine (one of the first girls I met my freshman year). It was great to see her. Later I got tired and took a nap under a car, which also felt great.
Because Had wanted to watch her sister in the marathon on Sunday we headed back on Saturday night (which was OK because I was pretty tired). I was disappointed that I didn't get to meet up with Sarah, as planned, but I'm sure she'll find her way up to the city sometime soon.
I love Chicago, but it was nice to adventure out to some place different for a bit. It was a little weird to be back on campus because it felt so familiar, but at the same time so far removed from my life. I really only knew about 3 people who still lived in Champaign, and most of them were working on grad school type things.
The rest of my weekend was spent, relaxing, watching House, and getting some things done that I had been putting off for a while (like shopping, cleaning, and repartitioning one of my hard drives).
It Might Be Time To Start Drinking Tea Again
October 9th, 2008|3:35pm.
...I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day, so I stay up too late, so I end up drinking too much coffee the next day...
Oooo! Also I finished Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman (it was really good!) and I started reading JPod by Douglas Coupland (so far it's really weird and interesting and kind of post modern).
A Victory Over Physics and Logic
October 7th, 2008|1:27pm.
Up until last Friday my apartment had been seriously lacking in good living room seating. We had 1 couch and some camping chairs. This was hardly acceptable. Rich's girlfriend found out that her boss was looking to give away a few couches and some other stuff, so we jumped on this offer, rented a truck and went out to get us some new furniture.
Once we had our haul packed into the truck we headed back to Chicago. Apparently we hadn't packed the cushions into the truck quite well enough because as we drove down the highway a few of them flew out. This required us to go back, park on the side of the road, and chase down a couple of couch cushions from the side of a major highways. That was fun.
BUT! We made it back to the apartment with everything we wanted to bring home and took the smaller couch upstairs. It was a pain, but it was in. The larger couch proved to be much more problematic and was a huge pain in the ass to get up to the 3rd floor. We managed to get it into the apartment, but that's as far as she would go. There was no possible way to maneuver that beast into the living room from our front door. We were fucked and so we had to take it back down the stairs.
Just when things looked their bleakest we had a plan. A poorly thought out plan, but a plan! We would bring the couch to the backyard! Rig up a make shift rope system out of some garden hoses we found! And we would use our clydesdale of a roommate to pull this couch up the back porch and into our apartment in a glorious display of desperate ingenuity!
Several poor decisions later we had the couch up into the apartment. Nobody was injured and despite my earlier predictions we did not drop a couch from 3 stories up. The couch now proudly resides in our living room (along with 2 other couches for some reason, it's like a frickin' couch party in there!). It was truly a proud day for apartment 3W!
Sittin' In A Coffee Shop
October 2nd, 2008|8:41pm.
Due to busy scheduals we didn't have band practice tonight, so I'm hanging out at the coffee shop near my house with Jen, catching up on a few things such as updating this blog and writing a scathing review of Canada for Team Hamster Hat. I don't really have anything due or any deadlines for websites soon, so it's nice to just hang out here and take care of some little things.
So, The American Autumn has a show this Saturday at the ol' Clearwater. It should be a lot of fun since we haven't played a show in about a month, due to preparations for recording. The Clearwater is always a nice venue and it's pretty convient for a lot of our fans, so hopefully we'll have a solid turnout.
Classes started up for me a few weeks ago (as I aluded to in this post, but never talked about because I got distracted by drawing pictures). This class is my first grad level class at DePaul (the classes I had taken before were prereqs I needed for this degree) and so far it's going well. The class is focused a lot on learning to read and write about research. Some of it is a little dry, but it seems like it will be a good thing to have a solid grasp on for the rest of grad school. I'm hoping this professor might be able to help me get involved in some research projects, so I can get a little experience with that sort of thing.
For some reason with fall rolling in, I'm getting the urge to write music again (I've been on a bit of a hiatus again because of our preparation for recording). There's something about sweatshirt weather that is sort of inspiring. I've been piecing things together in my typical random ideas in the back of a notebook way and I think I've got some things that could evolve into something cool. Hopefully they pan out the way I hope.
Well, I guess that about does it for tonight.
Team Hamster Hat Launched!
September 30th, 2008|11:19am.
So, after a weekend that left me with too much free time on my hands I finally got the Team Hamster Hat site ready to go live. The point of this site is basically to review a bunch of random things. Right now we've got reviews of some video games, leftover Chinese food, stuff like that and there's plenty more to come. Eventually we're going to start posting articles about "Science!", such as the effects of alcohol on Mario Kart 64 and What Happens If I Drink Way To Much Coffee?.
I think this site will be a lot of fun and it's nice to work on a project that will be of interest to people who don't nessicarlly know me. So check out the site, let me know what you think, and let me know if you want to be a part of this. I'd love to have a bunch of friends writing reviews for this site.
www.teamhamsterhat.com
