Technology

Technology — No Comments
8
Mar 09

an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine

From Rands in Repose, the classic The Nerd Handbook article says:

Your nerd’s insatiable quest for information and The High has tweaked his brain in an interesting way. For any given piece of incoming information, your nerd is making a lightning fast assessment: relevant or not relevant? Relevance means that the incoming information fits into the system of things your nerd currently cares about.

I find myself doing this a lot.  The distinction between nerds and normals can be striking, and to me this is the most painful difference in communication.  Normals will include so much irrelevant information in their conversation it becomes mind-numbing.  I know that they think they’re including relevant information, and to them these are important details, but when reduced to actionable items and related facts it is just static.

I’ve found this challenge goes in both directions too – when asked “How was your day?” or “Did you have a good at work?” they expect a detailed, blow-by-blow replay of everything that happened that day.  Maybe I’m missing some gene, or my brain is wired differently, or I just don’t care that much, but do I really need to replay my daily life to you as a soap opera?

How do you compromise? Is there a polite way to say “get to the point” in a conversation? Is there a minimum response to “How was your day?” that’s more than saying “just another day at the office”?  Perhaps there’s a way of explaining I just want the facts, please, and it’s not you but it’s me that’s different.

Technology — No Comments
11
Dec 07

Vudu – Day 1

I just received my new Vudu last night and set it up. Already I’m impressed, there is quite an extensive catalog of movies available for renting & owning. Both new releases, classics, and oldies are all well represented – over 5000 movies!

You can browse movies by genre, rating, and availability for rental as well as searching by director, actor, and title. I already have a bunch of movies selected to watch later, I can’t wait to get home and start a movie!

I only ran into one problem during the initial setup, but managed to figure it out. Vudu, here I come :)

Cooking / Technology — No Comments
15
Nov 07

Custom Cookbooks

Tina tipped me off about an awesome new company – TasteBook, which produces custom cookbooks! You build your own cookbook online, including only the recipes that you like, or even writing your own. A perfect gift or way to consolidate your recipe box.

House / Technology — No Comments
31
Oct 07

Butane Zippo

Annoyed at having your Zippo always be empty because the fuel has evaporated? Toolmonger found out that Zippo now makes butane lighters!

Technology — No Comments
30
Oct 07

Wireless SD cards

Gizmodo has an article about wireless SD memory cards. They’re normal 2GB memory cards for you camera or other device, yet also have a WiFi transmitter to talk to your home wifi network! The awesome Eye-Fi is available now – go get one!

Technology — No Comments
11
Oct 07

What is Portal?

Portal is an awesome new game just released. Built like an FPS, but instead of running around shooting bad guys you’re trying to survive a labyrinth as a test subject. Don’t worry – you have a portal generating device that allows you to create doors wherever you need them! This is easier to show than explain:

You can also play a 2D version online.

Technology — No Comments
11
Oct 06

It’s shipping!

I ordered a Sony Portable Reader back on Sept 26th, and it’s finally shipping! Now I get to wait 6-10 business days for it to arrive :)

This is an e-book reader utilizing the awesome e-ink technology that was first announced many years ago. I’ve been watiing for companies to start taking advantage of e-ink, and it’s been a long wait. What makes e-ink so great? It only uses power to update the display, unlike an LCD which requires power continuously while the display is on, and it uses ambient lighting instead of a backlight which makes it very readable in sunlight or anywhere else you would normally read a book. Because of how it works, a backlight can’t be used with e-ink, but any room light works fine (just like with normal books).

There have been some other e-ink ebook readers released, but they were early versions…Sony had a Japan-only release of the Librie, but that cost $800 to import to the US & then you had to re-flash the ROM with an english version. The Philips spin-off company iRex released the iLiad, which is notebook sized and has a touch-screen interface, but it’s overkill for reading books and has a very slooow interface.

This latest version from Sony has received great reviews, excelling at its single purpose – reading books. It also has a decent MP3 player in case you’re one of those ppl that needs to have a soundtrack when you’re reading ;) It comes with built-in memory, but also supports memory sticks or SD cards for additional storage. With a 1GB SD card, you can store a LOT of books. Many formats are supported – Word, RTF, PDF, TXT, HTML, etc. There is an online store too where you can buy popular book titles in ebook format. Just think, the next you go traveling you don’t have to decide which books to take and which to leave behind – you can take them all!

Software Development — 2 Comments
5
Oct 06

RoR: acts_as_versioned

acts_as_versioned is pretty awesome..but it lacks documentation regarding how it interacts with optimistic locking.

If you have a column named lock_version, then ActiveRecord will use optimistic locking. (yay!) But it also means that acts_as_versioned will not automatically create the version column that it uses, nor will it use it even if you create it yourself. Instead, you need to tell it to use the lock_version column instead:

class Message < ActiveRecord::Base
    validates_uniqueness_of :register_name

    acts_as_versioned :version_column => :lock_version
end