Thursday, September 25, 2008
My Yahoo! NHL draft
Thursday, September 25, 2008 
1 Comments
Yahoo! upgraded it's draft UI this year and it's freaking wonderful. It's Flex all the way. It made drafting a whole lot better and drafting went by a lot quicker. No worries about lame Java, a rich UI conveying a lot of information quickly, etc.
My results (drafted in 5th position, last few years lack of a star goalie killed me):
1. (5) Roberto Luongo G
2. (20) Marian Gaborik RW
3. (29) Ryan Getzlaf C
4. (44) Brian Campbell D
5. (53) Brian Rolston LW
6. (68) Brad Boyes RW
7. (77) Mike Ribeiro C
8. (92) Niklas Kronwall D
9. (101) Tomas Vokoun G
10. (116) Alex Tanguay LW
11. (125) Dennis Wideman D
12. (140) Chris Drury C
13. (149) Mark Streit D
14. (164) Pavol Demitra C,LW
15. (173) Marco Sturm LW
16. (188) Saku Koivu C
17. (197) Michal Rozsival D
18. (212) Tomas Holmstrom RW
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
You know someone is cool when...
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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they refer to an old Apple technology using the correct string data.
It's not an Apple 2. It's not an Apple II.
It's an Apple ][.
*grins*
Monday, September 22, 2008
Facial recognition
Monday, September 22, 2008
2 Comments
Blue Lava has announced that its iLovePhotos application has moved into a public beta. As photos are imported, iLovePhotos automatically detects individuals' faces.
The user can then add tags to the faces, and in future imports, people will be recognized and properly tagged automatically. After the process is complete, individuals can choose to filter their library to only show photos of specific people.
The software further uses the tags to pull information from Address Book, relying on this to set up automatic sharing feeds.
Alongside the public beta, a new Flash-based version is being introduced. Users can access the online software from any Mac or PC without downloading any software, and import their photos straight from Flickr.
**I haven't played with this at all and assume that the facial recognition is being done on the server side... but I suppose the technology is available to the Flash Player to whip something like that up -- after a whole lot of math and hard work. A Flash interface (which this probably is) for anything though is cool.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
OS X .5.5 dock resizing
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
8 Comments
I use QuickSilver all the time now, and part of that is for application launching. So I don't have anything in my dock anymore. But I'm on my wife's laptop and I noticed something after 10.5.5 that I don't think was there before - live resizing of the dock.
The separator in the dock used to allow for some right-click menu items and bringing up preferences for the dock, but now if you rollover that divider, you get a resize icon. Resize the dock up and down and it's done. No need for any menus at all.
Pretty cool - I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere yet.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Partition Gauge
Thursday, September 11, 2008
7 Comments
A "partition gauge"... I haven't seen many of these around in AS2 let alone in an AS3 flavor. I am sure there is one or two out there somewhere, but was wondering if anyone knew of one readily available.
I started coding up a version with custom events made from scratch that I think has some possibilities. You can see a screenshot of it above. This kind of slider is surely for edge cases, breaking a known quantity down into adjustable chunks, but it can come in handy for things.
If there aren't many of these out there, I could release the classes for this one or just work on it more myself until it's completed with a level of polish and housing tighter code and more events.
Monday, September 8, 2008
An iTunes 8 idea of mine
Monday, September 8, 2008
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iTunes 8 is rumored to bring with it automatic playlists... I guess like Last.FM for music that you already own. Well, that's the rub, isn't it?
The rollout announcement is slated for tomorrow at a venue larger than the Moscone. What about subscriptions? Paired with automatic playlists? Streaming to your iPhone, iTouch, computer, or AppleTV? Top 100 on iTunes, Top 100 Rated in R&B, All Led Zeppelin, etc. $69.99 add-on to MobileMe subscriptions, or $99.99 straight subscription.
This would be a sweet thing!!
Ones based on music in your Library already, for special events (Holidays), NFL games, etc.
Kachow.
Obama with a cigarette and Terrible Towel
4 Comments
Politics aside for a moment, here is a photo of Obama coming out of some establishment smoking a cigarette and waving the Terrible Towel. I guess it was back on April 22nd taken at Pamela's Diner. He would have better served at Primanti's I think.
The Stillers looked really good week one against The Texans. Let's kick some Browns ass.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
An interesting lunch with a S.W.A.T. team in my house
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
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I am fortunate enough to be able to run home to see our dog and have some lunch during the work week. Today, leaving the house I saw a slew of S.W.A.T. members and police walking the streets, some in camo and others in the traditional black. All with bullet-proof vests. AR-15s, sidearms, and shotguns. Two helicopters flying low over the neighborhood, looking for something. WTF?
I asked one of the members what was going on and was told they are looking for a 53-year old man armed with a knife who was suicidal. He lives at the far end of the street we're on (roughly a half-mile away). I thought I had seen something fly through our backyard earlier, but of course I just thought it was a kid or something. I had no idea what was happening outside. So I put it together and made sure they checked the house.
I had a team sweep our entire house which turned up nothing (thankfully) and they checked the backyard. We have about an acre of protected land behind our house and maybe the guy was laying low in there. It's thick back there and would be a decent place to hide. They have canine units and were going to run through there later.
It seems like a lot of firepower for some guy who is suicidal, I wonder if he tried to take a hostage or wants to, or ?I hope they find this guy and that he doesn't harm himself or anyone else. They even locked the local schools down. Looks like I have to run my own sweep when I get home from work.
This is nuts.