Kindle 3 Ready to Go in August

Thursday, July 29 2010 - - 0 comments

How sad is it that I want one of these? http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/amazon-new-kindle/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+(Wired:+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))   We already have a V1 and a V2. Carol’s V1 is mostly used for travel now, since her reading is done on an iPad using the Kindle App, which she says is better because she can make the font much larger without having to turn the page every few seconds (LOL). I use the V2 virtually every day. At this point, Devan is starting to use my Kindle a lot. Maybe I should give him mine so I can get...

Browser Based Card Games and Javascript

Thursday, July 29 2010 - - 0 comments

Lately I’ve been playing around with javascript based browser games. Specifically I’ve been creating card games that run in the browser. There are two goals here: 1) create a functional game using essentially nothing but javascript and 2) setup to convert the games to use HTML5 elements. The first game “ Race to the Moon ” is live. I learned a ton in creating this one. The biggest thing I learned aside from debugging javascript sucks is that I’m not a graphic artist. I spent more time trying to come up with the graphics for the game than anything else. Graphically there are still issues, but I...

Firefox, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Wednesday, July 28 2010 - - 2 comments

Does anyone still use Firefox? I swear, it was once my only browser, but these days every single time I open Firefox it takes forever to load and then informs me it is updating and to please wait. Minutes later, after I’ve switched to Chrome or if I’m on a no chrome site (LOL) to IE it will finish launching. It’s become so annoying I avoid Firefox like I used to avoid IE. Is Firefox a dying breed now that Chrome, Safari and IE are evolving and gaining steam? My 5 year old HP laptop boots up Windows Vista about 10 seconds faster than my 6 month old Windows 7 laptop, which has 2x RAM and much faster...

AT&T Micro-cell

Tuesday, June 22 2010 - - 0 comments

I finally succumbed and gave ATT more of my money in order to allow me to actually use the two iPhones that I have in my house. You see, I have zero bars at my house. If I go fifty feet out my backyard I have three bars and no problems. Fifty feet in front of my house I have two to three bars, but in my house zip. The installation was easy enough. Register the device, register your phones, connect it (in the order they say) and wait approx 90 minutes for it to get a GSP signal and register itself. My phone connected immediately. My wife’s phone we had to power off and on but it then connected without...

Slogging through the middle

Tuesday, June 22 2010 - - 0 comments

At 55k words on Oasis: The New Dawn. I’ve been consistently taking time off from writing because of other pressing things and each time it happens I tend to lose the story and restart. I know that what I’m writing now is nothing like what I envisioned. In fact, one of the characters that the story wasn’t supposed to be about has really taken over. What I would like to do is start over, writing the entire story from that characters perspective. Once I’m done I may end up going back and actually writing her story instead.

Social Web and Education

Sunday, June 06 2010 - - 0 comments

The relationship between the social web (aka Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc.) and education has almost always been rather tumultuous. Recently a student at a school in my city committed suicide. I happen to know this particular school has a strict policy against teachers being on Facebook or any other social site. The question that has been bothering me lately is why? In the case of suicide is it almost always telegraphed, sometimes very explicitly. If a teacher happened to be linked to this particular student on a social site wouldn’t they have picked up on those signals? Oh, I’m sure the argument...

Windows Live Writer Updated

Sunday, June 06 2010 - - 0 comments

I just downloaded and installed the latest Windows Live Writer. One question: why does this thing take so long to install? Seriously, given what it does it should not take almost five minutes to actually install. It makes me wonder how many hooks this “little” program has into my operating system and what it is really doing.

IE8 Developer Tools No longer Visible on Windows 7

Tuesday, May 25 2010 - - 0 comments

I’ve just begun to experience this problem. When I hit F12 or Developer Tools from the menu the screen flashes and nothing appears to happen. Looking at task bar I can see the Developer Tools window however all that is there is a mouse icon and the close. After screwing around with it for a while I discovered that the window is actually open, however it has been minimized to a very small size and pushed off screen. To Fix: Click on the developer tools window from the task bar to select it as active (not that you can’t see it). Use Alt + space to bring up the window menu, and using the keyboard...

Steve Jobs Promised me Freedom from Porn but He Lied

Friday, May 21 2010 - - 0 comments

I am shocked, no appalled, that the promises of “Freedom from porn” have not been upheld. My iPad not only plays porn, but I am convinced that YouPorn is one of the best playing web sites on the iPad [not that I spend time on porn sites]…

Prius Owners are Environmentalist Posers

Thursday, May 13 2010 - 0 comments

The big push to own a more fuel efficient vehicle and help the environment seems to be what drove the popularity of the Prius: Photo from: www.treehugger.com There are a lot of skeptics out there when it comes to how environmentally friendly the Prius actually is. There is little doubt that the environmental cost of manufacturing a Prius, especially the hybrid technologies in it, are far greater than comparable non-green technologies, but let’s just say that doesn’t matter… I believe Prius owners are posers because here in New England not a day goes by that I don’t get passed on one of our highways...