Music — 1 comment
18
Jun 10

Under Pressure’s famous bass-line

“Under Pressure” is a 1981 song recorded by Queen and David Bowie. It marked Bowie’s first released collaboration with another recording artist as a performer…

Under Pressure album cover

“…the song’s primary musical songwriter was Freddie Mercury — though all contributed to the arrangement. The earlier, embryonic version of the song without Bowie “Feel Like” is widely available…”

“The September 2005 edition of online music magazine Stylus singled out the bassline as the best in popular music history.”

“There has been some confusion about who created the song’s famous bassline. John Deacon said … that David Bowie had created it. … Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor have credited the bass riff to Deacon; Bowie also said on his website that the bassline was already written before he became involved.”

It’s fun to think about how this confusion may have happened. Deacon and Bowie in his studio in Switzerland, chatting, with their lush English accents, about the song and sounds. Deacon, has his trusty bass guitar, Bowie, is singing or just bustin’ out some crazy-cool 80s synth-pop sounds. They’re jammin’ back and forth and suddenly, they strike rhythmic gold.

Bombombom bada bombom

Whoa! So they roll with it. Deacon plays the jam with the rest of Queen in a collaborative session with Bowie. History was made in a matter of minutes. Perhaps it was an epiphany of musical sorts, or maybe even an accident.

Both men involved credit the other out of modesty and respect. Likely, one was particularly more instrumental in the creation than the other. But without two, it may have evolved into something entirely forgettable.
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Anecdotes — No comments
15
Jun 10

Want to do something right?

Remember the Six P’s:
Piss Poor Planning Prevents Proper Performance.

Personal Goals / Time Management — 2 comments
13
Jun 10

Take a break .. take a break .. take a break …

If you’re a white-collar, soft hands clean clothes information-worker, you sit on your ass day in and day out and probably, at night too.  Using the computer is your work and play.  By now, you probably have decent desk ergonomics and understand the importance of them.  Carpul-tunnel and RSI are real, no matter who you are. 

Hell, I bet you’ve had some strange aching pains in your shoulder, arm, elbow, wrist, and or hands at some point.  An early warning of what could come and enough to motivate you to make some positive, preventative changes. Let’s assess the basic ergonomics of a healthy desk:

  • Screen is at arms length from your face and at eye level.
  • Keyboard is parallel or slightly lower than where your arms rest on the desk. Your wrists should not be higher than your elbows.
  • Mouse easily accessible, moves effortlessly, requiring little to no movement of your arm.
  • You’re sitting up straight.  Shoulders back and not hunched over.  If it hurts, you probably need a better chair – get one with good lumbar support. Or, baring the new chair option, one of these inflatable cushions.
  • Feet flat on the ground or better yet, on a foot rest that promotes upright sitting (not slouching!).
  • Check this out for illustrations of an ideal workspace configuration.

Now, on to the meat of the meal: taking breaks.  
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Time Management — 12 comments
12
Jun 10

Introducing the Countdown Timer gadget

The Countdown timer gadget was created as a learning project and because I needed something to remind me to take breaks throughout the day. I wanted something that had a tiny footprint both in appearance and function, similar to the gnome-timer applet (for Linux desktops).

5 minute countdown underway

The concept is very basic – countdown from a preset time (in minutes) and alert when time is up. This gadget is more akin to a kitchen timer than a countdown-until-my-birthday type timer. However, the gadget will happily countdown 135971947923 minutes in case that amount of time happens to be of value to you.

the settings dialog box

As with any quality gadget or applet, this one is configurable. The Custom Countdown setting (in minutes), if set, will override the default of 30 minutes and any Preset Timers selection (also in minutes). Lastly, the Number of Alarm Sounds option defines how many times the audible alarm will sound when time is up. Putting a 0 in this option field disables it.

The Countdown Timer gadget was designed to work with Windows 7 but there should be no problem running it in Vista. I’ve committed the code to my github account where you can follow along for nitty gritty details.

Download it now

See the included README for installation instructions and additional info. Post questions and comments to this entry and I hope you find it as useful as I have.

Last Updated: July 1st, 2010

Internet Technology — No comments
09
Jun 10

PHP released 15 years ago today

PHP version 1, by Rasmus Lerdorf, was released into the world on June 8, 1995. It’s original name of Personal Home Page was renamed, with a heavy nod to recursion, to “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor” in 1998 with the launch of version 3.


I owe a great deal of my professional success to this language, it is the one that truly sold me on programming.

<?php
/**
* June 9, 2010
*/

echo<<<HAPPY15THBIRTHDAYPHP
* May your future be full of fantastic features and ever greater efficiencies.
* You've powered the dynamic web from yahoo to facebook.
* May you continue to enthrall and encourage programmers young and old.
* You've come a long way, be sure to have lots and lots of cake today.
* May your full fledged Unicode support be your gift to us sooner rather than later.
* You've got your problems, but then don't we all.
* May you survive and thrive another 15 years.
HAPPY15THBIRTHDAYPHP;
?>

Bonus: here’s some cool PHP usage statistics and trend graphs.

Computers — 10 comments
22
May 10

Adding a desktop graphics card to a laptop

The bane of Integrated Graphics, as the last remaining major hitch to gaming on an otherwise fantastic computer, I made it my mission to find a solution. No longer will the crappy Intel graphics chip (X4500MHD aka GM45) hold me back from fully enjoying contemporary PC games. And just in time too – Starcraft II is just around the corner.

The solution is called a (DIY) ViDock (Video Dock). Subtract the DIY portion and you’ve got a commercial product made by villagetronic. After seeing how outrageous the price was – it was ~$400 – I dug a bit deeper. It turns out that the components that make up the ViDock are pretty simple and easily obtainable.

To guide me throughout the quest I utilized a vibrant DIY community on notebookreview forums spearheaded by a diligent fellow by the alias of nando4. His knowledge hsa allowed the DIY’r spirit to flourish in many, myself included. Plus, the current form in which the technology now exists, it doesn’t take a genius to do what we’ve done.

Interested in using a 3d graphics card such as one produced by ATI or Nvidia? Then read on for a step-by-step account how.
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News — No comments
28
Apr 10

Beware CA GOP Governor hopeful, Steve Poizner

Never have I heard such a blatant recount of a politician so out of touch with the common American. His book, entitled “Mount Pleasant” about his one-month teaching stint at an average middle-class public high school in San Jose, is full of exaggerations and misconceptions.

The latest episode of This American Life takes an act to investigate the book’s colorful descriptions and quite effectively establishes solid facts contrary to billionare Mr. Poizner’s published perspective. When confronted about the lies, including city & police statistics as well as quotations from those he worked with at the school, Poizner blindly sticks to his own account. He places blame on unmotivated kids and an imaginative neighborhood full of crime.

The only hopeful moment comes near the end of the TAL act in which Ira interviews the school teacher who oversaw Mr. Poizner’s class. This teacher says that inspite of Poizner’s inaccurate interpretation of the setting, he seemed to genuinely care about the kids future.

Even so, Steve’s unwillingness to concede even the slightest admittance that he may have gotten it wrong, is a frightening reflection of his inability to produce objective judgement. His narcissism is so thick it’s suffocating. He squirms and flakes off in his answers to Ira’s straight – are you sure you got it right – questions.

A person unable to concede mistakes and misuse facts to self-serving ends (to get elected) is not someone we want heading our State.

Internet Technology — No comments
23
Apr 10

Do not underestimate the need for Multi-Browser testing

No matter what the trending statistics tell, people do use alternative browsers. If something totally doesn’t work, these users are going to complain about it and rightfully so.

test all of these

Technical (javascript) lesson learned: do not use setTimeout() for making an external script call such as document.write(); If the result happens to contain an iframe tag, all your caller pages will be overwritten. Only seems to affect Opera and to some degree IE. Safari, Chrome and Firefox are immune (and as it happens, the three browsers I originally tested against).

Internet Technology / News — No comments
12
Apr 10

How to win at the “platform” game

A contemporary story brought to you by Twitter… who arguably, would have never risen to its present great heights in popularity, and thereby valuation, if not for the labors of its creative users… and now, we shall see their true colors…

“…Twitter investor Fred Wilson speculated that Twitter would edge out third-party developers whose add-ons for the microblogging service merely filled feature holes that the company ought to have built itself. Then Twitter, which previously hadn’t developed its own mobile apps, bought Tweetie, a popular Twitter service for the iPhone, and released its own BlackBerry app.”

With apparent lack of long term reputation strategy, their latest purchase is not well timed as ”…these announcements came right before Twitter’s big developer conference, Chirp, which opens in San Francisco tomorrow.”

Twitter also purchased Summize nearly two years ago to fill the former void of search.

And the lesson to gleamed from Twitter’s totally tubular tale is… ”The real reason to build a platform is to boost your company’s valuation. An open application programming interface lets third-party developers donate their labor and ideas to the cause of enriching your investors. And through their creativity, investors get inspired about the potential to make money.”

The moral of the story is: be the foundation (platform), not the pretty structure that sits above it. Because if you’re a company building off of some other company’s platform, being bought out is the only way to achieve a big pay day. Good luck with that.

Quotes from VentureBeat’s “How Twitter won the platform gamble“.

Also worth noting, as another prime example, Apple’s App-store.

Games — No comments
08
Apr 10

Final Fantasy creator insists The Last Story is not a FF rehash

Hironobu Sakaguchi has “publicly” (on twitter) apparently refuted (twisists?) seriously or not, that his latest creation The Last Story (worth a visit just to listen to the short intro music loops – gorgeous) is not another Final Fantasy. Obviously, I’m not the first to make the observation of their similarities.  I greatly anticipate further proof.

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