2008 Nov 9, 11:29
I finally replaced my old regular cell-phone which was literally being held together by a rubber band with a fancy new G1, my first Internet accessible phone.
I had to call the T-Mobile support line to get data added to my plan and the person helping me was disconcertingly friendly. She asked about my weekend plans and so I felt compelled to ask her the
same. Her plans involved replacing her video card so she could get back to World of Warcraft and do I enjoy computer gaming? I couldn't tell if she was genuine or if she was signing me up for
magazines.
I was with Sarah in her new car, trying out the phone's GPS functionality via Google Maps while she drove. I switched to Street View and happened to
find my car. It was a weird feeling, kind of like those Google
conspiracy videos.
The phone runs Google's open source OS and I really enjoy the application API. Its all in Java and URIs and mime-types are sort of
basics. Rather than invoking the builtin item picker control directly you invoke an 'intent' specifying the URI of your list of items, a mime-type describing the type of items in the list, and an
action 'PICK' and whatever is registered as the picker on the system pops up and lets the user pick from that list. The same goes if you want to 'EDIT' an image, or 'VIEW' an mp3.
I wanted to replace the Google search box gadget that appears on the home screen with my own search box widget that uses OpenSearch descriptors but apparently in the current API you can't make home screen gadgets without changing
parts of the OS. My other desired application is something to replace this GPS photo tracker device by recording my
location to a file and an additional program on my computer to apply those locations to photos.
tmobile personal api phone technical g1 android google 2008 Sep 26, 2:22This made me laugh: "People think of goths as weirdoes who take vampires too seriously, and therefore they can't help being worried on some level that a crazy goth might, you know, want to make them
bleed. Whereas steampunks are - what? Weirdoes who take pocket-watches too seriously? What are they gonna do, vehemently tell you what time it is?"
steampunk article goth scifi geek via:ethan_t_hein 2008 Aug 14, 4:52"French street artist ZEVS ... now also has a home in the art world and had his first exhibition in Asia: Postcapitalism Kidnapping at Hong Kong-based gallery Art Statements, documenting how ZEVS
cleverly distorts the logos of big brands. For PingMag, he explains their visual power."
graffiti culture art cultural-disobediance interview streetart guerilla 2008 Jun 19, 4:21Funny quotes + Billy Mays coverage! "He appears to be saying 'I am a carnie huckster, you know it and I know it, but that's OK because this product is that good.'"
tv infomercial advertising article 2008 May 19, 11:46Museum of fraudulent art. "Instead of being destroyed, as they were in the past, the fraudulent pieces will live to see another day in the Museum of Fakes, established in 1991 as part of the
University of Salerno's Center for the Study of Forgery."
art museum fraud via:boingboing 2008 Apr 22, 4:33Reaction to Phrack's howto on GPS jammer. Sounds like the article wants to make it into a bigger issue than it is: "Information in the article that appears in the current issue of the online hacker
magazine Phrack potentially puts at risk GPS devices use
gps gps-jamming phrack government 2008 Apr 3, 2:19"How one supercharged province cranks out lightbulbs, buttons, and bra rings, as well as instant cities for the factory workers. "
via:boingboing china economics environment politics video 2008 Mar 3, 4:16An article on the documentary of Alan Abel hilarious hoaxer. "The idea was to write a satire about a group called "The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals," or SINA, which would call for animals
to be clothed for the sake of decency."
via:mattalyst humor article Abel-Raises-Cain dvd movie documentary Alan-Abel cultural-disobediance 2008 Feb 24, 12:20Folks on a Simpsons board discuss their hunt for Army Man scans. They found some but don't post them here.
army-man simpsons humor 2008 Feb 7, 2:36To summ up the last Q&A, the one I was interested in: "Is there any way to escape the characters " and ' in an XPath expression...". And their answer is no. Lame. I thought XPath folk would have
defined this.
microsoft msdn xpath xml article 2008 Feb 3, 11:01FTA: "Like Klein, EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston had spent much of the previous December reading press accounts of the administration's secret surveillance program. "It was all I thought
about over the holiday," he remembers. In fact, at his bos
via:boingboing eff article law privacy government history 2007 Oct 24, 10:12Without realizing it this was the page I was looking for three weeks ago.
via:kris.kowal web chart graph ajax .net flash programming visualization statistics reference 2007 Jul 14, 3:12
I've been at Microsoft three years as of last Thursday. It makes me feel old but on the bright side I've upgraded offices. I now
have an office with a window. Its actually a coincidence that I got this office at the time of my Microsoft anniversary but I like to pretend. I've had a single office for only four or five months
now so its a nice surprise that I'm moving into a single window office so soon.
Of course this move means I'll be leaving some things behind. For instance the hanging dry erase pen holder that I created out
of office supplies I will leave attached to my old white board. My new office has fancy whiteboards with trays built-in (sooo fancy) so I know the person coming into my old office will make better
use of my hanging dry erase pen holder then I would. I explained to him that the rubber bands need to be replaced every eight months or so and not to exceed the maximum weight restrictions.
Additionally, the office art masterpiece I created I will also leave behind. When Bill Gates was featured on the cover of
Diversity Inc. for his amazing
philanthropic acts many of us got copies in our mailboxes. I
collected mine and some from the recycling bins and put up five of the covers on the wall. Eventually others added to it which was my intent, but I only started this when I eventually checked my
mailbox a week or so after the magazine arrived so there weren't as many covers left with which to work. At any rate I ended up with eleven on the wall. I'll leave the interpretation of the artwork
up to the viewer.
microsoft personal office nontechnical 2007 Jul 4, 12:15An article from National Geographic on swarms
swarm visualization behavior science via:infosthetics 2007 May 17, 11:48Two AIM bots face off and generate some humorous conversations.
ai humor article im robot science 2007 Apr 11, 10:27Summary of the various proposed replacements for HTML4.01.
article html internet xhtml xml html5 xhtml2 w3c chris-wilson 2007 Mar 19, 1:1020 facts on various topics like skin, rats, and aliens.
blog education list monthly science trivia 2007 Jan 23, 12:38Article on bookmarklets (javascript bookmarks) available on the web.
bookmarklets bookmark favorite web design article
Some rights reserved