Archive for the ‘Afternoon Projects’ Category
Fall cleaning
Just in time for the holidays, I’ve gone through and updated my portfolio with everything I wrote for the Fall 2008 semester in Bentley’s HFID program. I also took the liberty of rewriting the About Me section, and cleaned up the links in the right hand sidebar. It should be a bit less cluttered now.
Now to get back to actually producing new content!
Neutrino Labs
I purchased some hosting from Verve the other day, as I needed a place to host all of my personal “web experiments” and web services. Although its front-facing image is just a WordPress blog, I have two projects-in-progress up on Neutrino Labs.
- Mozilla Weave server (because Mozilla’s services.mozilla.com is frequently swamped and inaccessible)
- TrackMe! Mobile Location server (because I just want to do cool stuff with my new HTC Kaiser)
If you find some cool server project floating around on the tubes, let me know!
When is a computer not a computer?
…when it’s virtualized! I’ve been experimenting with running Windows 2003 Server R2 via VMWare Fusion on my new MacBook Pro. So far, everything’s been running much more smoothly than I anticipated. However, I found that trying to run a server OS as a workstation OS is full of its own quirks (like having to fill in a reason/description every time you power off). I just (about two minutes ago) finished installing Windows Vista Ultimate via Boot Camp and am going to try Fusion’s new beta feature that allows running a Boot Camp partition as a VM. I’ll let you know how it works out!
Instant messaging, iPods, and other day projects
Rather than tell you about the many hours I’ve spent researching multivariate displays recently, here are a few cool things I picked up on some of my daily web scouring expeditions.
After switching from Trillian to Pidgin about a year ago, I saw a new instant messaging program over on Lifehacker called Digsby. Why the switch? Digsby integrates both Facebook (meh) and Twitter (yay) into its UI! Plus, the Google Talk integration actually works (compared to Pidgin). It just came out of closed beta, so give it a try.
I decided that I couldn’t wait for Apple to release their official 3rd party application support for the iPhone and iPod touch, so I found a fantastic unlocking program that’ll jailbreak either of those devices in under a minute. It’s called ZiPhone, and it supports all sorts of unlocking variants for iPhones (just one for the iPod touch!). You can just jailbreak an iPhone/iPod touch if you just want 3rd party application support, or jailbreak, unlock, and activate an iPhone unit for use on other providers’ networks. It’s quick, extremely easy to use, and best of all: it just works.
If sharing music via Internet and LAN is more your thing, head over to Deusty Designs and check out Mojo. Available for Mac and Windows (beta), Mojo lets you view the libraries of other iTunes users on your friends list and download any songs that catch your ear. The Windows version only works over LAN right now, and it autodetects other Mojo users on the network (although with limited success in my case; Matt and I couldn’t get our copies to see each other). The Mac version is substantially more robust and functions over the Internet.
On the web browser front, we saw the release of Firefox 3 (Beta 4) from Mozilla in the past week or so. It’s the first time I’ve really sat down and tinkered with the new interface, and I have to say I’m impressed. The biggest change that I noticed is the new address bar UI: check out the size of the back button! I know I rely on it all the time for navigation, and since the forward button doesn’t see nearly as much use (from what I’ve observed), I’m liking the disproportionate sizes. The other cool feature is the web address matching in the address bar. Notice how it scans through your history and attempts to autocomplete addresses it thinks you’re trying to reach? Nifty! If you’re looking to try the beta without mucking up your Firefox 2 install, try the Portable Apps version.
Fox and NBC have a new video site called Hulu with episodes and clips from a fairly large selection of current and former shows (House M.D., all of Firefly, the list goes on). There are also a couple decent movies (The Big Lebowski). There’s no uploading here; it’s strictly a “sit back, relax, and watch” sort of affair. Some nifty extras like Lower Lights (dims the rest of your screen, leaving the video bright) and embedding support make this one of the best ‘official’ online video offerings.
Enjoy!