Pseudorandomness

Ruby on Rails

2008-11-21T13:30:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to post this guide a guy I had a couple of classes with during graduate school. Seems to have a lot of useful links on learning Ruby on Rails.

Streaming Media from OSX to a PS3

2008-11-10T11:07:00.002-05:00

The dust has settled around here and my entertainment center is close to complete. I just have to finish building the projector screen and organize some of the wires.

One thing I was worried about was trying to figure out how I was going to stream media from our computers to the PS3. I figured I'd have to dust off and upgrade my old XP box as the machines we primarily use here at home are Macs. But alas, I found a couple of sites that cover how to stream media from OSX to a PS3:

Network of Linux Machines

2008-11-07T13:56:00.004-05:00

I'm not really sure if I'll ever have a network of Linux machines. Managing two OSX machines is enough trouble as it is. But if multiple Linux machines ever becomes the case in my network, I know I'll have a solution in NIS to help manage IDs and such across the network. My basic understanding of this, and I emphasize basic, is that NIS is Linux's implementation of MS's Active Directory.

Election Day '08

2008-11-04T22:40:00.004-05:00

For some reason, with this year's election I decided that I was not only going to vote but get all the freebies as well.

The first stop of course, was to get out and vote to obtain the ever so valuable voting sticker (yes, I am actually in it for the electoral process as well). Surprisingly the lines were non existent considering all the hype of ginamorous voting lines. That's right, I used ginamorous.

I had been starving myself on purpose earlier in the day so that I could enjoy all the free goodies, so the first place I headed to, was Krispy Kreme for my doughnut.

The line here was longer than at the Voting Precinct but I obtained my free doughnut.

The doughnut was OK but not worth my waiting to eat. The next stop was Starbucks for my cup of coffee.

Again it wasn't anything to write home about but free is free.

The next stop was later in the day as Ben & Jerry's had a window of time for their deal. The line for this place was insane. This was probably due to the fact that it is the only Ben & Jerry's in the RVA.

After downing my cup of ice cream, I headed over to the Chick-fil-a over by my house for the free chicken sandwich.

So was it all worth it? Not sure. In writing this, I find it in no way enjoyable and am deducting cool points from myself. Maybe I'm going through a caffeine and sugar low. Although I do feel I will wired until the AM to see who wins the election, but I think I may have shaved a couple months off my life.

UPDATE: Obama wins and its not even the AM yet. Maybe I'll clean my office or something while this sugar rush wears off.

Macs and MySQL

2008-11-04T17:55:00.002-05:00

Just realized that the CocoaMySQL project has been discontinued. I found the new branch off in Sequel Pro the other day. Looks like something to try out if I'm ever freed from the clutches of Oracle.

Todo lists and such

2008-11-04T17:52:00.002-05:00

I'm a big fan of todo lists but have never fully 100% incorporated them into my daily life. The closest I've gotten was a moleskine notebook that had quite the run and is still a favorite in my book.

I stumbled upon this iPhone and Tasks article the other day and figured it might be use to some people who read this blog.

Enjoy!

Where have I been?

2008-10-20T11:39:00.003-04:00

No where really. I just haven't been doing a lot of random web browsing. I think work and deadlines do that to people.

Anyhow, the most useful link I've found in the last several days covers the Secrets of Auto Detailing. I like to take care of my things. Hopefully I'll have time to take care of this before it gets too cold.

UPDATE: Well this detailing stuff is way more complicated than the mentioned site describes. Found a forum entry that has recommendations on products to buy and things to do. Looks like I'll be dropping the car off at the detail shop.

Bible Word Clouds

2008-10-02T09:42:00.003-04:00

I've started bible studies recently. This is not because I'm a super devout Christian. Its because I believe there is a little more to life than programming and blogging. Seriously! I feel the need to explore various religions. Sure I'm starting out with Christianity (its the one I'm most familiar with), but I do plan on exploring Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and other religions. I feel people generally tend to find opinions about or judge these other religions without ever exploring them. And this journey for me is not to judge, but to discover the common ground between all these religions. It's something that, in my opinion, people really do not focus on.

So with this current journey, I've found some way to involve computers and programming. Its just a thought for an application. An aspect of this application includes the idea of word clouds (also known as tag clouds). These are essentially a measure of frequent a particular word occurs in text. The more frequent the word occurs the larger the font.

An excellent example of this is some word clouds that I found produced from the Bible.

Canned Tuna

2008-10-02T09:38:00.002-04:00

It looks like I'll finally be making my rounds back into a gym sometime soon. Its not because I'm getting fat or anything. Its just that I enjoy working out and challenging myself physically. For this reason I've actually considered doing a triathlon.

Well like every workout freak will tell you, the truth of the matter is that the majority of training has to do with your diet. You can work out all you want, but without a good diet you are not achieving your workout goals without the good balance of exercise and diet.

So I've been considering that lately and have decided to attack the 10 cans of tuna we have in our cupboard. I stumbled on this excellent site for basic ways to spice up tuna for those of us who get tired of eating the same old can daily. Enjoy!

Programming for the iPhone

2008-09-29T11:05:00.003-04:00

As I primarily work on a Mac and own an iPhone I've been interested in iPhone development for quite a while. I have the necessary license and several programming videos but like always don't have the time. Besides, I've decided to prioritize mastering JAVA and picking up some RUBY first.

Although I've decided to put my iPhone programming on hold tuaw had a pretty good post the other day on how to get started in iPhone programming.

UPDATE: It seems apple has gotten rid of their iPhone Non Disclosure Agreement. Now developers will actually be able to help each other with their programs. Its good to see that Apple is starting to make decisions that just make sense.

Our Pandora's Box

2008-09-29T10:54:00.005-04:00

Well it seems like we've opened up Pandora's Box in our home. My wife and I were doing just fine with no TV and cable. This was mainly caused due to my laziness of putting up our home entertainment system. This all ended when the necessary cables came in the other day.

I immediately got the Wii and PS3 hooked up to the projector (which is projecting a beautful 80 inch image). I'd take some pics and post them online but I fear the resulting damage of turning on that system again would cause. Since the system was setup we decided to go ahead and buy Mario Kart Wii. That game is addicting! We had a semi gathering here on Saturday and everyone was instantly hooked.

We're so hooked that yesterday before we could leave to a friend's house for dinner and we had to sneak in a couple games of racing. So be forwarned if I disappear from posting for a couple of days you'll know the cause.

On a random web browsing note, I'm interested in setting up our system so that it plays .avi's and other multimedia formats. So far I've found TVersity but that seems to be a Windows only solution, BLEH! We'll see what else I can figure out in the weeks to come.

Projector Screen

2008-09-24T14:27:00.002-04:00

As the arrival date for my HDMI and Component Cables come closer I'm starting to consider what kind of effort has to go into building the projector screen. I was able to find two good sites that had information on how to build a projector screen:

After considering these two solutions I might have to go to the total 'easy' route and just buy from Visual Apex.

Rubik Cubes

2008-09-24T11:50:00.003-04:00

So based on my profile pic its obvious that I have a thing for Rubik Cubes. I blame this all on Mr JoyRun.

Funny story about them. A bunch of buddies and myself were heading to Las Vegas for my bachelor party. We were at the airport and I was showing them how to solve the original rubik's cube. One of their wives call and he explains what we're doing. Later, I find out that she said something along the lines of "that's going to be the geekiest bachelor party in Vegas ever." Less than 12 hours later we run into Paris Hilton at a club at Vegas. Same buddy calls his wife to tell her about it and she promptly slaps herself in the head. True story!

Anyways the same buddy sent me a link to this new rubik's cube that looks pretty challenging. That one will have to wait until after I solve the rubik's revenge and the professor's cube sitting on my shelf.

Grilled Steak and Vegetables

2008-09-22T23:13:00.002-04:00

Yesterday when Cooky and I got home from our football game I decided to fire up the hibachi grill for a couple of hot dogs. I got the grill going so good, I just wanted to start grilling anything we had! What started with hot dogs, continued with grilled chicken, and eventually to tonight's get together.

Cooky and I used to have people over a lot. But recently with us moving to the new apartment and her starting residency we've haven't gotten to host our typical get togethers. So I decided to have a couple of friends over for some grilled steak. Of course with me, a couple of friends always turn into more than several. One day I think this will drive Cooky beserk, but for the time being it doesn't seem to bother her much. In fact, I like to think its a good stress relief after a 12 hour shift at the hospital

It ended up being a great time. We got to use the new table we got from IKEA and had a large dinner with close friends (7 people). I ended up trying to grill some vegetables base on some tips I found from here, here, and here. I'd say it turned out pretty well as we wiped out all the food we had including: rice, grilled Omaha steak (Thanks Mom Miranda), grilled vegetables, and a cherry pie. Thanks everyone for coming over!

SIDE NOTE: As I write this, it seems like the Chargers are letting yet another team back in the game during the 4th quarter. When is this madness going to stop? I'm glad we don't have cable right now.

Surge Protectors

2008-09-22T10:43:00.003-04:00

I finally got the projector up this past weekend and ordered the remaining cables. All that's left to do is build a screen to accommodate the whoooping 70" I'm projecting. Also in the process I decided that several surge protectors were necessary to protect all my ~~toys~~ useful electronic hardware from frying out.

I decided that I did not want to re-experience the fiasco that happened at bestbuy a month ago and that it was time to look to good old google for information on surge protectors. How stuff works has a very informative article on an introduction to surge protectors and how they work.

Of course from as a couple of guys posted on this deal at bensbargains, the best way to protect your precious hardware is to just unplug it while not using it. Keep it simple!

Free Course Sites

2008-09-19T10:48:00.004-04:00

One day I hope to actually go back to school and get my PhD. I didn't really applied to any big name schools for my BS or MS degrees. I did learn early on though, that while the school does have an impact on the quality of your education, what you make out of it is ultimately the deciding factor.

I have always been curious what the difference is. Fortunately for me a lot of school programs out there are moving towards posting their lecture videos on the web. The following is a list of sites I've found over the years:

Swap Space

2008-09-17T00:17:00.002-04:00

In an attempt to keep the learning going I've decided to go ahead with the Gentoo installation on an old machine. I know it'll be a time drain, but the brain has to keep on working right?

I've also decided that in the process I was going to nitpick and look up every part of the process I did not 100% understand. Today's winner was swap space.

I was familiar with the concept but the linked article gives a good overview of Linux's use of swap space and how it can be configured.

Loans and Extra Cash

2008-09-16T10:59:00.002-04:00

I've been looking at the loans my wife and I have and have decided its time for another programming project. This one will probably shoot to the top though considering the longer I put it off the more money we loose.

Everybody has some kind of loan, whether it be for school, a car, credit debt, whatever. And there are programs out there to help people look at what kind of payments they have to make, how much money is going to principal versus interest, etc. In fact I've been using this simple and straightforward online tool for our loans.

The real issue is, most people have multiple loans. And these loans can be totally different: they may have different lifetimes, different interest rates, and other kinds of funky rules. So what is out there that is available for people to track these multiple loans? I did a brief search yesterday and wasn't able to find any good free applications. I know some may say, you can just set up an Excel spreadsheet but that seems like a rather tedious pain in the butt to me!

What I want to have is an application that tracks all my loans and give me all the information I mentioned above. But what I want most, is for the application to tell me which loan do I put the extra cash I have at the end of each month. I need an application to handle all this!

So like I said its something I'm probably going to build myself considering the need. So far my basic research for various loan equations have led me here. I'm sure there'll be many more links to come.

Typing Speed

2008-09-14T20:46:00.003-04:00

Steve Yegge had an interesting post the other day about programmers who do not know how to type. This reminded me of a site that I had checked out a while ago that I found to be pretty good for teaching people how to touch type (I had known how to touch type before but wanted to play around after getting an ultimate das keyboard).

Yegge mentioned that he had a friend who could touch type with one hand at 70 words-per-minute (WPM). I tested myself and it looks like I max out at 66 which is kind of pathetic against a guy using one hand. Yegge himself mentioned that he does about 120. Looks like I have a little practice ahead of me!

Football Sunday

2008-09-14T20:17:00.004-04:00

It was a rather busy football Sunday today in the Castillo house. Cooky and I woke up this morning and headed out to our first Extreme Social River City Football Game. We lost the game, but had a lot of fun. I think everyone was finally exposed to Cooky's ultra-competitive side. Especially when she showed flashes of Randy Mossesque behavior when yelling that she was open.

We came home after that and decided that we both wanted to work on some QB skills. For her, because she wants to be more comfortable throwing the ball in games and for me, because I'm pretty sure she throws a much better football than me. Hey, I'm man enough to admit it! Plus I want to have to save my future children from telling their friends that Mommy taught them how to throw. Hmmm, maybe that's further humility I'm trying to save myself from.

Anyways, I was able to find a number of QB drills that our QBs used to run in training camp. Plus youtube had a number of videos that cover basic concepts in throwing:

After that we spent the rest of the day watching football with some friends, only to have it end with the Chargers's disappointing loss. I was only able to watch the first half of that game and honestly our pass rush is non existent without Merriman. Apparently we were cheated in the final seconds of the game with a premature whistle on a fumble that should have been ours, but that doesn't excuse the first half. Despite that craziness, it was a pretty good day.

Well, I guess its back to work until next Sunday. Hope everyone has a good week!

Why Bookmark?

2008-09-13T06:10:00.002-04:00

Seriously, why do we even bookmark anymore? Now I'm not talking about that little piece of paper you used to mark in a book. I'm talking about those hundreds of links you have in your Bookmark Menu or Toolbar that have not been visited to in over a year.

I myself am guilty of it. That's partially my reason for starting this blog. Between my computer and my delicious, I'd say I have close to 800 bookmarks. That's insane!

Now here is the real issue, if I was presented with those 800 bookmarks today I would not know what 90% of them were for. I would have to revisit each site and spend about 15 seconds or so trying to figure out what I saved them for. That's about 3 hours sorting through bookmarks. That's a waste of bleeping time!

So one's initial questions would be why do you have that many bookmarks? Or don't you delete them when you're done? Or isn't your bookmark title specific enough to tell you what the bookmark is for? I'll admit there's quite a bit of self inflicted pain here. But it's what the technology I am using currently supports.

So back to the purpose of this blog. What I've been doing is, every site I visit daily that I find of bookmarking worthiness I post about it here and write a little splurge about it. I mean I feel its far more likely for me to go back and read through my posts rather than shift through old bookmarks.

But what about the social aspect of it? What about sites such as delicious (just realized their url is delicious.com now rather than the creative del.icio.us, bummer) that allow users to share their bookmarks? You know, that is a problem... my current methodolagy of "bookmarking" does not support me sharing my bookmarks on those sites.

What would be cool though is if someone developed a blogging client or blogger javascript that once I posted a post would somehow take all the links in that post and store them on my delicious account. What would be even cooler is if this application would take the labels from a blogger post and create them as tags to be associated with the delicious bookmarks. Sound crazy? Looks like people are already trying to build something such as this. We'll see if I can find something suitable or build something better.

Publishing Source Code in Blogs

2008-09-11T11:49:00.001-04:00

This is a topic I spent sporadic time looking into here and there. The main issue is if you want to write about code on a web page or blog, how do you go about preserving the format and code highlighting as they are in most major editors and IDEs?

I've found two main solutions which I find to be helpful, one that uses javascript to highlight code as its presented in your code and another that uses an emacs buffer to translate code from its formatted and highlighted form into HTML source.

SyntaxHighlighter

This is the more convenient of the two methods as you can do it straight from blogger. It involves hosting some code and modifying your blogger template to utilize that code. Then when you post code to blogger you utilize certain codes to provide the syntax highlighting. The sites I found to be most informative were the following:

HOWTO: posting code

Using SyntaxHighlighter on BLOGGER

htmlize.el

This method involves the use of emacs but is not limited to the languages supported by SyntaxHighlighter. Since emacs is such a widely used editor I would assume that syntax highlighting is supported for just about every programming language. I have no experience using emacs, but its only been on my radar to try out one day, considering my extensive use of Linux and VI. What better time than now?

htmlize.el (follow the link for the source) is an emacs package that "converts the buffer text and the associated decorations to HTML" as quoted by the original author. It was interesting because Steve Yegge described in a blog post of how he attempted to implent such a tool but was later pointed to htmlize by one of the comments on his blog.

Conclusion

I'm going to try both methods as time permits and provide more feedback here. If you're not interested in syntax highlighting and just code formatting than you can always go with this blog, that provides a text box for pasting formatted code and converts it into the necessary html format. Hope this helps!

Bash Part 3

2008-09-11T11:42:00.000-04:00

I finished up the last part of IBM's Bash by Example series last night. It was a very informative read and provided a great real use example of bash. I would definitely recommend the series for anyone interested in advancing their knowledge of bash. It made me feel like taking one of these old laptops in the corner and building Gentoo, but alas that's a project for another day!

Cappuccino

2008-09-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

Someone mentioned this web framework entitled Cappcucino in their twitter the other day. Considering the person's level of programming expertise I figured its something that's worth checking out.

Bash Part 2

2008-09-09T10:16:00.000-04:00

I've continued my journey of mastering Bash. I made it through IBM's second example in their Bash by example series. Also along the way I've stumbled upon another informative tutorial on Bash.

Some may suggest that this is a waste of time as I probably won't be building anything based on Bash, but I feel its good to be informed in some of these fundamentals. After I finish these tutorials I plan on spending a couple of weeks reading some Bash scripts just to continue the learning.