Ryan Capote

Tip: Shorten a URL

2008-08-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

Want to show your friend something on the internet by sending them a URL, but the URL is huge and and ugly(must...resist...derogatory...joke) there are several services you can use to shorten the URL and make it easier to remember and doesn't clutter up your message or your Facebook status.

http://tinyurl.com - Tiny url simply shortens the URL tinyurl.com/randomcode. This is great for shortening URLs for text messages or simply make it easier to insert into text. You can also give your URL an alias so its easy for you to remember; something like tinyurl.com/cool-blog-post
http://snipurl.com/ - Snipurl is similar to tinyurl, but Snipurl allows you to keep track of all your shortened URLs.

Replace those huge and ugly(hugly?) URLs with something better and smaller with TinyURL and Snipurl.

Mesa Back

2008-08-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I got back late Saturday from Catalina Island and had lots of fun. I did pretty much everything you can do there with a few exceptions. I did some kayaking, Canoeing, Snorkeling and Shotgun shooting. We also had this event called Warcanoe where half the camp got into canoes and canoed a mile to a beach where we camped the night right in the sand. It was great fun.

In other news, 8 days until I turn 18 on August 19th. Oh the many things I can do when I turn 18.

Off To Camp

2008-08-01T22:55:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I leave to Catalina Island off the coast of California. I'll be there all week until Saturday. I'm going with my Boy Scout troop and this will be my last Boy Scout trip as a Boy Scout and hopefully my last as a Life Scout. What will I be doing? I signed up for snorkeling and Shotgun shooting. It should be awesome to learn how to snorkel in a beautiful place, as well as shoot things. I'll take any chance I get to shoot a firearm. It is unknown if I will have cell signal, but if I do I will try to post updates every night.

Stupid Stupid Stupid

2008-08-01T08:21:00.000-07:00

So the past few days I've been checking my Google Analytics to see how many viewers I've been getting...and it's been at zero for the past few days. What happened was I forgot to put the tracking code into the template after I chose a new one. So I haven't been tracking views. Oh well, its in there now so I should be getting at least 1 viewer :P.

Delicious Updated

2008-07-31T23:17:00.000-07:00

Yahoo updated Delicious today, their social bookmarking site. Check it out at www.delicious.com. My Delicious page is http://www.delicious.com/aranince.

Delicious is a social bookmarking site. You simply bookmark a site through Delicious.com, and its saved there for you to access from any computer, any time. Not only does it save your bookmarks in the cloud, but it also allows you to share your bookmarks with your friends. This way if you find an interesting site, its simply to let your friends know, or to see what your friends are up to.

Planning for the Future 2

2008-07-31T22:14:00.001-07:00

So you know what you love to do. You like to help people with their tech problems, you like to draw graphics, you like to program computers, you like to write stories, or you like to design web sites, or you like to write music. What ever your cup of tea is, you can gain experience without getting a job or internship. How? I'm going to outline two ways of getting experience for your portfolio by using the internet. First is by joining an open source project, second is by publishing your work.

Computers have software. Your web browser, your video games, your email, all of those are computer software. Software is created by companies of programmers, musicians, artists, and designers. And usually all of this work is copyrighted and protected within the company and the company gives next to no information about the development, nor do they get the help from the community. Open Source projects are groups of people who develop software, and give the source code and everything out for free. Not only that, but they encourage people to join the project and help out. Most projects don't even require you to join, you simply post your ideas or work and they will consider it and possibly incorporate it into their project. This is a great way to get experience working on a team, and getting real experience working in the field.

The second way is by publishing your work. Get a website or blog and post your works. Your music, your graphics, your photography, your programs, etc and get it out there on the internet. People can watch your website and see what you have done. This shows the employer your capabilities and shows off your experience. People can also give you constructive criticism to help you improve and to encourage you.

Getting involved in a project and publishing your works is a great way to get yourself out there and makes it easier for you to get a job that pays better than minimum wage.

Planning for the Future

2008-07-31T21:55:00.000-07:00

As a teenager currently in my last year of high school, it is important that I start thinking about what I want to do in the future. What college I'm going to go to, what I'm going to major in, what I'm going to do as a profession, etc. Not only what I'm going to do, but how I'm going to get there.

Something I think most teenagers don't realize is that your future begins as soon as you let it begin. Meaning, what you do now will effect your future. Whether you spend time hanging out with friends, skateboarding, or playing video games, it will ultimately effect your future in some way. The experiences you gain from participating in those activities are unique and handy.

Sometimes the things you do as a kid can benefit your future, other things don't help at all. As a kid or teenager you can love drawing, love doing math, or love sports. These are only a few things people love to do, and greatly helps them in the future. Others love to write, or use computers, or even program computers. Starting at a young age doing the stuff that you love could give you an advantage for the future. Anything you do as a job requires learning and experience. Beginning to learn, and beginning to gain experience early gives you more knowledge and more experience which is important in applying for a job, and actually carrying out that job.

Young minds have an easier time learning. When you are young, your brain soaks things up like a sponge. If you know you love to draw, write, etc. learn as much as you can while you are young. As you go on in life, you can only build on top of that knowledge and learn more, thus giving you an advantage as you get older and its time for a job or to learn new technique or technology.

I highly encourage everything to begin to think about what you want to do for your career and begin preparing your self for that. Being young makes it easier to learn, your brain soaks everything up.

Apple Updates in September?

2008-07-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Contrary to my previous post, AppleInsider claims that Apple has sent out notices to channel partners about dwindling supplies of iPods and Mac notebooks in in the coming weeks and these partners are advised to stock up for the month of August.

To revise my predictions, Apple could release the new Macbooks the end of August or the beginning of September and release the iPods at the end of September. That would hopefully give each product the attention they need.

New Macbooks?

2008-07-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

Something I've been looking forward to all year long is a new computer. So I've been following all the rumors 'n' such relating to computer hardware and what is coming soon. We know for a fact that Apple is going to come out with new Macbooks with an all new design. The question is, when?

Some rumors suspect the end of September. While this is a good idea, I have reason to believe it could possibly be earlier. First, Apple has a deal going where the yare giving away free iPods with the purchase of a Mac. This is to encourage people to buy Macs, as well as get rid of their current stock of iPods. This deal ends September 15th. After that date, there is a very good chance of Apple releasing new iPods. The problem is that Apple will not release new iPods AND new Macbooks at the same time. The reason behind this is they like to put all the focus and attention on one product or product line.

What I am thinking is that Apple releases new Macbooks in August not only to leave space in September for new iPods, but to help sell more iPods to get room for the new iPods. Also releasing new Macbooks in August will give people who are buying for college a chance to get their hand on new machines before they leave.

Staying Safe in an Earthquake

2008-07-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

After the unexpected earthquake here in SoCal, I decided to write a post about staying safe during an earthquake. Here are a few tips to help keep things under control.

Stay calm - When you start to feel the earthquake, your heart rate is bound to go up. Thoughts race through your head such as is something going to call, is the house going to collapse etc. California specifically has strict building requirements and standards to prevent building collapses. Worrying about collapsing buildings is the least of your worries. Staying calm is a need to help you think clearly and reasonably. When you are calm you are able to think clearly and make the best decisions and know what to do.
Expect Aftershocks - Usually after the main quake, you will experience smaller aftershocks. It is best to expect these to help keep you calm. Once an earthquake finishes does not mean the shaking ends. Wait a few minutes after the earthquake and wait for the aftershocks before you continue.
Move - If you are in a house, its best to move out of a room into a door way. This is the safest place to be because it protects you from items falling of off shelves or walls, and you are likley to be far away from windows which could break. The next best place is under a table. If you are outside, its probably best to get into a car or to get out in the open where you are far away from anything that could possibly fall. If you are in a car, you most likely won't know there is an earthquake happening, but if you do...it's best to just stay in the car.
Make sure everyone is okay - After an earthquake happens, make sure everyone is okay. If it is a strong earthquake happens with a lot of injuries, help the person in the most life threatening situation. If possible, move them out of the life threatening situation, call for help, and help the person as much as you possibly can. If no one in your house hold is hurt, it wouldn't be a bad idea to go to your neighbor's house and see if they need any help.
Have proper safety equipment close - Make sure you have a first aid and fire extinguisher in a easy to get to location. Make sure the first aid kit has all of the needed items and is stocked at all times.
Setup an Earthquake Drill - At your office or home, it is a good idea to have a plan if there is any kind of disaster. If you need to evacuate, everyone or groups of people should have a set location to evacuate too. You should also know how many people are in the group so you can make sure everyone is safe.

So here are my tips for staying safe. The most important being staying calm. If you are calm, everything else comes naturally. Be sure to have the proper safety equipment, help anyone who needs assistance, and make sure you get to a safe place during the quake and expect aftershocks.

5.8 Earthquake in SoCal

2008-07-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

There was just a 5.8 earthquake here in Southern California at about 11:45 AM. The quake took place 2 miles south of Chino Hills and we felt it all the way down here in Lake Forest/Rancho Santa Margarita area. The quake lasted for a good 30 seconds to a minute. Everything and everyone is fine.

USGS Report

Google Tip: Image Search Faces

2008-07-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

This is a cool tip I got from Tekzilla at Revision3. When you type a name into Google's image search, Google doesn't always know exactly what your looking for. At the top near the search bar click on Advanced Search. You can then choose any content, news content, or faces. Click faces and your image search results will return pictures of only faces.

Mesa Back

2008-07-28T14:12:00.001-07:00

After being away from my blog for a little while, I'm pleased to say I'm back. Next week, I'm going to Emerald Bay, Catalina for Boy Scout camp, my last outing as a Boy Scout. In September I'll be going in for my Eagle Board of Review where a few people from the Eagle Board will interview me and vote on whether I'm Eagle material. All of my paper work, and notebooks have been reviewed along with my Eagle Application and have been accepted.

Along with my Eagle Scout accomplishment comes a computer. In the beginning I wanted a Macbook. Then this year I switched my plans to me wanting to build my own PC from scratch. And now again I'm considering the Macbook again. So when the end of September rolls around, I'll see what the whole situation is like and decide what I want to do then.

In a completely different subject, this monday will be me and my girlfriend's year anniversary and we are as happy as ever. Things are going great. So there is what has been happening for the past few weeks, I hope to keep this blog going here on out.

Busy Bee

2008-06-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

Today was a busy, yet fun day. I went to our church in the morning to finish up hours I needed for a Merit Badge, walked to lunch, went to Target, went to O'Neill Regional Park to finish up some buisness, came home, did some paper work, and called a few people. But made it fun is just getting stuff done. Actually doing constructive stuff is a great feeling and definitely a stress reliever. Just like Vaclav Havel one said:

"Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs."

Also today, FireFox 3 officially release with 1.6 million downloads in the first 5 hours. Mozilla, the company behind FireFox, is aiming to break the world record of most downloads in 24 hours. Click here to download FireFox 3...it is definitly worth it!

I'm also enjoying my 90F room with my 120F computer keeping it that warm. I'm seriously considering putting my next computer somewhere that is not in direct view of the sun's painful heat.

Blog No No

2008-06-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

Woopsy...its been a while since I've updated my blog, huh? Thats not the best thing I can do for my blog. Well, school has ended and I'm officially a senior. Only one more year of high school, then I'm off to college. My plans for college haven't been fleshed out yet. I'm wanting to take management and administration courses. I would do programming courses, but I already know practically everything that they teach Although it might not be a bad idea, t32hey will actually make me finish an application. On the computer side, my plans have changed to be more Windows centric. Basically, instead of getting a Macbook...I'm going to build my own Windows machine. For less money I can get a better computer. So I'm planning on installing Vista 64bit, so I can take advantage of my 4Gb of memory, with a Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3Ghz with a 1333MHz FSB. I love talking geek speak.

Development of my game has been temporally stopped and development of a Windows application has started. Its a Getting Things Done, todo manager written in C#. I've been working on it for about two weeks, and I've gotten pretty far. But I have yet to write some important parts such as dragging and dropping tasks from the inbox into the various different areas to organize everything, the ability to save your todos, and the ability to have sub projects.

As for my Eagle rank, I am almost there! I have about three weeks to get everything completely done, which means get my notebooks together and complete as well as finish my last Merit Badge. I'm almost there! Woot!

I Hate Snakes

2008-05-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

Today was the release of the new Indiana Jones movie. I shall refrain from posting any spoilers in this post. I was able to sit out front of the theater from 4:30PM till 11:15 PM when they started letting us into the theater. The group in front of us in line dressed up as different characters from the movies and posed for some pictures. Once we got inside, there were a few unruly folks throwing beach balls around like at Baseball games.

Enough about the premovie show, the movie was good. Harrison Ford was great, Shia LaBeouf wasn't bad at all. The movie follows the same formula as the older movies, with references to the older movies. Fans of the series will definitly want to see this and add it to the collection. There were some stuff in the movie that seemed out of place, but all in all, it was a good movie. I definitly want to see it again...when I'm slightly more consiouse.

Long Time No Update

2008-05-20T23:14:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since my last blog post. First, I completed two Marit Badges towards my Eagle Scout, I now only have 2 more to go. Second, as you may or may not know, I have been working on a game. What happened was I ran into some difficulties with the current setup I was using. So I changed platforms entirely. Instead of C++ and SDL, I will be using Java and Java2D. This means the game will be able to run on practically anything that has the Java runtime installed. The game will be an applet, so there will be no need to download or install the game. Just go to the webpage and enjoy.

So far, for minimal experience using Java, I've come quite far in the matter of two days. I am just about right were I was with my C++ code, minus the colision detection. Two days versus few weeks. A great turn around for learning a new programming language.

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. Today we spent the whole day with grandparents, enjoying each others company. Afterwords we enjoyed a nice session of The Office and then a family meeting which completed another Merit Badge for Boy Scouts. Two badges down, two more to go. One of them, Personal Fitness, I am not sure if I have completed or not. One of the requirements is to exercise for three months, and keep track of it. The problem is, I've only been keeping track when I exercise, which means if I missed a couple of days, I didn't write anything in the chart. I've been working on it since the end of January. So I'm going to have to talk to my counselor and see if I need to continue working on it, or what the deal is. So close to my Eagle, I can almost taste it.

Why I Like Macs

2008-05-10T18:37:00.000-07:00

I am a Windows user. I've been using Windows since I've used a computer, so I'm quite used to Windows, the user interface, etc. This past week, I had to teach about Hinduism. I decided I wanted to do a presentation and use Keynote on the Mac. So I stayed up late the night before the class working in Keynote preparing my presentation.

Keynote is a very impressive program. There is a Mac commercial where PC likes working on spreadsheets and calculating how much time Mac just wasted painting a picture. That is how Mac's programs feel when compared to Windows programs. Windows feels like a professional, office oriented, mature program that people who work in an office use. While Mac programs are like doing something for fun, when its actually for professional use. Keynote can accomplish highly professional presentations, while making the experience fun, easy, and powerful. I have to admit, I haven't used PowerPoint at all, so my comparison isn't very good. But by using Windows programs in general vs Mac programs, there is a big difference. My brother used PowerPoint originally for his presentation, but after seeing how well Keynote works, and the cool effects and transitions that were easily done, he quickly switched to Keynote.

Not only were creating the presentations enjoyable, but presenting them was too. Since I did the presentation on a laptop, I was able to have the projector show off the slides while the MacBook shows me other important information. The MacBook provided me a view of the next frame, the current frame, the current time, and a timer. This is amazing. I was not expecting that, its this kind of experience that makes me happy to spend money on a product. Also, fact that I was able to get the MacBook and projector setup easily with limited experience on Mac speaks volumes.

Keynote is apart of the iWork package which include a word processor and a spreadsheet program all for $79.99. Honestly, Keynote is worth the $80 alone. The funny thing is, one of the other presenters had an XP laptop using PowerPoint, and every time PowerPoint tried to display the slides on the projector, PowerPoint crashed completely. Just had to throw that in there :)

50th Post *Does a Little Dance

2008-05-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

Huzzah, this is my 50th post! Unfortunately, my blog views have dropped to zero in the past few days. I need to be more adamant about my postings, and more interesting. Remember to comment on my posts with your comments and ideas for improvement. I want to get off the Blogger platform. I'm planning on switching to Wordpress on my own web host...just need to push my self to spend the money. Any suggestions for web hosts?

In other news, Google Reader has a new feature called Google Reader Notes. Google Reader is a good RSS Feed aggregation, but it also is good for sharing news items with your friends via your Shared Items or Fr41iendFeed. But what if you run across something that isn't in your feed list? That is where Google Reader Notes comes in. You can note text or the current web page you are viewing to share it with your friends who are watching your Shared Items, or people who are following you on FriendFeed. This is a great addition to an already great web app.

This whole "Web 2.0" movement is very cool. I love how everything is becoming socialized and you can share stuff with other people over the internet. It makes using the internet very exciting and interesting. Makes it more than just viewing web pages, but brings us the users into the experience and makes the internet seem like a small room with all your friends.

Hinduism is Complicated

2008-05-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

Hinduism is complicated. I have to teach a class for half an hour on Hinduism. Hinduism is a very diverse and complex religion with many different doctrines, scriptures and paths. Along with many large weird words that are in Sanskrit, a classical language of India. Hopefully the class will turn out well, I'll be using Keynote to hopefully make everything clear.

In other news, I started reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. I've only read the first few chapters, but so far it has some great points and ways to relax and organize your to-do lists. I'll write a summary of the book when I get done with it. I highly recommend it.

Dehydration Es No Bueno

2008-04-29T16:57:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you are outside, washing the car for three hours while drinking little water in the 80F+ degree California whether? Usually dehydration. Headache, dizziness, dry mouth, etc. Please avoid dehydration and drink water! Dehydration es no bueno!

So today was a fun day trying to do homework while dealing with a headache and dizziness. Today I get to write the third of three essays on the First Amendment. This essay is suppose to be an argumentative essay about the First Amendment and what I have written about it so far. Tho, I've yet to write it yet...going to do that now.

Exploit: A notable or heroic deed.

Wetness

2008-04-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

Today was definitely a different day for me. First, when I woke up the first thing I did was take a shower. Not something I usually do. After I did my homework, I washed our car giving it a thorough wash, vacuuming all the tiny crevices. Twas quite wet. I'm glad I did not have my iPod or phone in my pocket. But on the other hand, I killed the car battery by leaving the radio and lights on while I was washing.

Also, I am no longer the Senior Patrol Leader for my Boy Scout Troop. This August I will be turning 18, which is the cut off point for Boy Scouts so it was time I hand my position off to someone else. But I really liked that position, and hopefully getting my Eagle Scout will help me land a leadership position in my professions. What I want to do is either start my own company or be in some sort of leadership position for a company in the computer software field.

Wiki Wiki Wiki Wiki

2008-04-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the pause in posting to my blog. Today we went out and had lunch with the family to a BBQ place called Bad to the Bone. I thought it was excellent. I had a Steakhouse Burger with a side of Ranch Beans and French Fries. Quite delicious and its kept me full for quite some time.

I was able to test my collision detection code for my game the other day. It did not work(was expected) the first time, but, with some help, I was able to get it work. The player now has physics and can now be thrown into a cannon. Currently, what the game does is it spawns the player. The player gets gravity applied to it and gets pulled to the ground. On it's way down I put an invisible cannon in its path so I can test the collision detection. It works!

In other news, I have been contributing to GameDev Wiki, a Wiki about game development. Although I've been doing more orginization of the articles than writing them, I have written a few(CMake, Guichan, and What is Game Programming?). Check it out! My username is Eeyore.

Another Busy Day

2008-04-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

When will I learn to stop putting things off? I suppose this means I can't work from home, unfortunately. The TV pulled me in two or three times today for 45 minutes at a time, so I was doing homework later than usual. I also got a 100% on my Geometry quiz! Ten out of ten simple questions. Yay.

In other news, I worked on my game a bit today. I was able to implement a camera offset so you can move around the level and not be stationary. In addition, implemented the collision detection logic, but I've yet to test it. I have also implemented some culling so it does not draw sprites that the user can't see. Slowly but surly moving forward.

I also got some work to build a new website for law corporation. I'm hoping the design and color scheme I came up with is professional looking enough. I'm quite pleased with it personally. I'll link to it once it's done and published.

Game Update + More

2008-04-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

Previously, I was having issues rendering my graphics with OpenGL on my game. So I switched to using SDL and everything seems to be working perfectly so I can move forward on my game.

In other news, I figured out how to run my own code on the Wii using the infamous Twilight Princess buffer overflow hack. I am able to compile code using GameCube homebrew tools. Although...I can't do very much because the Wii homebrew scene hasn't fully developed yet. I would love to get into the DS homebrew scene...but that requires extra equipment, but the codebase for the DS is very mature.

http://wiibrew.org
http://devkitpro.org

What I am hoping is that Nintendo will open up the Wii and WiiWare channel similar to Microsoft and XNA on the XBox 360. That is my dream. I would drop this young solution for an official Nintendo solution any day.

In other news, I wrote the second essay to my First Amendment project. This essay is about the First Amendment in our schools, and how school officials can censor pretty much anything they want. The last essay has to be argumentative, so I will probably argue why the First Amendment is important and why we should have freedom of expression in our schools.

No Intelligence Allowed

2008-04-20T21:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went to see a controversial movie created by and starring Ben Stein, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The movie is about how people are being persecuted for considering an alternative theory to Darwinism. Professors who have written about or merely mentioned the possibility of an Intelligent Designer in the creation of our universe were fired and blacklisted from being able to get a job. These scientists find that Intelligent Design is a religious view and that religion has no place in science. Scientists won't allow people to publish or talk about anything related to Intelligent Design.

The problem isn't whether Intelligent Design is true or false, or if Darwinism is true or false. The problem is a matter of the First Amendment being violated. The freedom of speech and to inquire. Scientists won't allow the possibility to teach or research Intelligent Design. They simply throw it away as if it is a bunch of hooblah.

What this movie talks about is there is only one scientific belief that you are allowed to follow. Anything else is incorrect and you get ostracized for it. Why won't they allow Intelligent Design to be considered, taught and researched so it can be proven incorrect? Are atheists afraid of something?

4/5 stars
I highly recommend this documentary.

Twhirl 0.79

2008-04-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

There is a hidden beta of Twhirl 0.79*cough*,which allows you to receive Twitter updates on your computer. The new 0.79 version allows you to receive both Twitter and FriendFeed updates. This is a great feature, much better than Alert Thingy. One window for Twitter and one for FriendFeed. This makes things less messy. Also, Twhirl is much more stable and less buggy than FriendFeed.

So look foreward to Twhirl .79. And if you have yet to join Twitter...do it now!
What is Twitter? Twitter in Plane English.

My Twitter and FriendFeed: rcapote

Nim's Island

2008-04-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

Tonight, me and my gal went to see Nim's Island. Its a movie about a girl and her dad who live on their own private island. The girl loves to read a book about a character named Alex Rover, but little does she know she will eventually meet her favorite character.

The movie is a kids adventure movie. There were some scenes where the special effects were really unfinished and you could tell they used special effects. Other scenes were really polished. The story was good, the acting wasn't bad at all. Although at the end they could have made it a little longer and shown more(trying to avoid spoilers) of their life, but it was good as it is.

3/5 Stars
Recommended for families with young children.

Blog Direction

2008-04-19T08:17:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned before, I have changed the direction of the blog from simply reporting tech news(like there aren't enough sites for that) to be more of what I'm up to, along with the occasional tech post. It seems to be a good idea. The only time I get views is when I post something that is my opinion or about whats going on in my life. So things are going good, its definitely encouraging when I see that there are more than one unique views.

Tho, the views to my blog isn't very high at all. I'm wondering if people are viewing my site more from an RSS reader more than my actual site. Probably not possible on Blogger, but is there a way to track how many people are subscribed to the RSS feed?

Brutal Headache

2008-04-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

Today has been a painful day for my head. This morning I went in to get a filling for a shallow cavity. But wait, there's more! They cut off some gum that was covering said tooth which made it hard to clean. No drills, just shaved it off with a laser. But for some reason, I was expecting it to work like the movies...ZAP! But that wasn't quite the way it worked. So I've had a headache for a majority of the day, but the numbness is gone. Also, my Dad picked up the sheets of plexiglass for my Eagle Project. Tomorrow is the assembly!

Games Don't Cause Violence

2008-04-17T19:49:00.000-07:00

On the show XPlay on G4TV

Crunched Day

2008-04-17T18:40:00.000-07:00

Today was a busy day. Had class in the morning, came home and started painting my Eagle Project with the final coat of paint. The painting went well, and hopefully the assembly on Saturday will go good. Right now(using my blog as a distraction) I'm working on a part of a large literature project. We have to write 3 essays on the First Amendment these three essays will be compiled into one large essay and bound together in a notebook. I'm currently working on the first essay. First two essays have to be factual while the third has to be argumentative. Here is how I am currently planning it, could possibly change:

Essay 1 - History behind the 1st Amendment
Essay 2 - Recent 1st Amendments Events
Essay 3 - Arguing the Recent Events

Fortunately the essays only have to be 5 paragraphs long. I'm hoping when I attend college they don't surprisingly drop large essays on my head that I can't handle. That would hurt.

Note to self: bring helmet to college.

An Update

2008-04-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

Well, as I mentioned in previous posts I'm going to change the direction of the blog to be less of a tech site and more about me and what I'm up to.

Over the past few months I've been working on my Eagle project, which is a requirement for the Eagle Rank in Boy Scouts. My project is building three information kiosks for a local campground. So far we have materials bought, cut and primed. We will be painting and assembly in the next week, and hopefully get it installed sometime in the middle of May.

Also an update the game I am writing, I originally was going to use SDL and OpenGL as the back end of the game for input and graphics rendering. But I came across a problem with rendering(because I had to write everything using bare OpenGL) so what I am thinking about doing is, when I get enough time, switch the game to use an exisiting cross platform library that will do the rendering for me. Either SDL with software rendering, or another library I have in mind that will use OpenGL with hardware rendering.

So that is whats going on. Only a few weeks left of school, I cannot wait!

Quick Physics Lesson

2008-04-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

So I'm working on my game which involves a bit of physics so I've had to teach my self some simple physics. First what is speed and force?

/ - division
* - multiplication

speed = distance / time
force = mass * acceleration
velocity = force & direction

Speed is equal to the distance over a period of time. Then force is equal too the mass of an object times acceleration.

Those are the formulas that we will be using to calculate how fast we are going to move our object. Now in the computer world, everything is limited by pixels or we can look at it as a grid. So we can move one pixel up and one pixel to the right to move diagonally, but would take forever and only move the image at a 45 degree angle. So we need to calculate how many pixels up and how many pixels right/left we need to move the picture depending on the given angle. For this we use some Trig.

xScale = cos(Direction)
yScale = sin(Direction)

Using these formulas we calculate the velocity

xVelocity = force * cos(Direction)
yVelocity = force * sin(Direction)

We use these to calculate the velocity of the image. Since we have pixels as our measurement, we have an x location which is its horizontal location and the y location is its vertical position. So to move the image, we have to change its x and y positions. We multiply it by elapsed time because the number of frames in a span of time varies on different computers. Here is how we update the location:

x = x + xVelocity * elapsedTime;
y = y + yVelecity * elapsedTime;

So hopefully this wasn't too complex and you've learned something that you can think about next time your driving, or pushing the garbage cans, or anything that involves movement.

The Internet in Plain English

2008-04-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

So you've herd of Twitter, Blogs, RSS Feeds, Wikis and the like, but what exactly are they. Explaining them completely without over complicating the description is not an easy task. Fortunately Common Craft has created videos explaining such internet applications. This is great for explaining what all of these fancy internet apps are for to those less technically advanced, or if you have a hard time explaining it without getting technical. They also release their videos under the Creative Commons for non-commercial use. Here is a great example:

Twitter in Plain English

So check it out!

Speed of News a Bad Thing?

2008-04-04T20:24:00.000-07:00

As our world becomes more technical, and we get our news and information at the speed of the internet, how is the news credibility going to be effected? Think back to a time before there was computers. News came by either TV, radio, newspaper, or friends. As more and more shows appeared on TV and the radio, as news papers started releasing quicker, a new pressure was put on reporters and writers: get the news out before everyone else. This pressure was put on the reporters to drive more traffic to their medium and generate more revenue. This made checking facts and doing research less of a priority before speed. Thus stories can lose lots of accuracy.

Today, we have blogs, Twitter, social networks, email, and instant messenger. News travels as fast as it happens. When someone witnesses an event, they send to Twitter or text their friends about what they saw. This can go both ways. Either the event gets reported more accurately cause its getting recorded while its still happening or fresh in the person's memory. Or it can be reported so fast that it gets misreported and rumors start going around.

Also, the whole nation or the whole world can be moved to support and only believe in one view. People will block out what they don't want to hear, don't go to the news sites they don't agree with, block the person form Twitter or IM that they don't want to hear what they have to say. This will create large group of people all believing and understanding the world in one view. And quite often that view is not factual or proper. This could cause big problems.

It is important to look at every situation from every point of view and angle. Not only will this help you understand and know what you believe better, but it will open up a whole new point of view that could open your eyes to what you agree with was wrong. The credibility of news posts, while they will probably stay the same, the bias of the stories and how it sways will effect the nation negatively.

Personas for FireFox

2008-04-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

As you may know, FireFox has the ability to be customized through extensions and themes. This beta extension by Mozilla is called Personas. What is Personas? Well, we know that FireFox has the ability to customize the look by downloading themes. But these themes usually change everything, the icons, and colors which sometimes we don't always want. Personas simply adds a backdrop to the bars at the top.
The advantages to Personas are quite simple. First, it doesn't change the icons or layout of FireFox. Second, designers do not need to write code to create a theme. This makes changing the look easier. All you need to do to change the look, is click the little icon in the bottom left, select the theme and it switches to that look very quickly. Either it downloads the theme so quickly you don't know that it downloads it, or it doesn't need to be downloaded. Whenever a new theme is available, it appears right in the menu. So no need to go searching through a web page for themes.
Here is the theme I'm currently using:

So go and check it out. Personas work for FireFox 2 and up. And remember, this is beta software so use at your own risk.

FireFox 3 Beta 5 FINAL

2008-04-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present the final beta for FireFox 3. Although the changes form the last beta are mostly under the hood, there are some slight aesthetic changes such as glowing tabs when hovered, some changed icons, and rounded icon box next to the URL bar.

This is beta software and should be used for testing only...unless you willing to take chances like me. If you don't want to take a chance with the beta software, FireFox 3 should be released in a few months and I HIGHLY recommend it no matter which operating system you run.

Check it out here

Moving My Blog Forward

2008-04-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

Right now I am using Blogger(As if you didn't know that already) to publish my posts to the web. But Blogger is limited in expandability, especially if I want more pages and more flexibility. In previous posts I have stated that I was writing my own blog software, which basically made it to version 1.0 and stopped. It is very simple, and has few features...and the security of it is unknown. So I decided to try out Drupal and Wordpress to run my blog instead of my homebrewed app.

Drupal is more of a Content Management System(CMS) than blog software. It has more than enough options and features to keep someone busy just learning the ins and outs of it for weeks if not months. Drupal is better suited for community sites and sites that will expand to support its community.

Wordpress is definitly the mainstream software of the blogosphere. It is blog software which is easily expandable and does support many plugins and features that anyone would want in a CMS. Its infinitly simpler yet has plenty of options and features to make bloggers happy.

Both have a simple install process and great admin interfaces. I have decided to go with Wordpress because a lot of features that Drupal has to offer, I simply don't need. A couple of big reasons why I did not go with Wordpress from the very start were two fold. First, the admin pages were awefully slow. Second, the WYSIWYG editor for pages and posts were being funky when you add HTML and switch back to WYSIWYG. Both of these problems were fixed in the latest 2.5 release. I have started working on porting my site layout and theme over to Wordpress, just need to make sure everything follows Wordpress' standards to get the best compatibility and use out of it. Hopefully I'll be able to the new blog up and running soon!

Keeping Up With the Times

2008-03-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

In today's day in age, the way we get our news, information and how we keep up with our friends has changed drastically in the past decade. All a person needs now is basic computer and an internet connection and you have access to an over whelming amount of content, news, and information as well as keeping up with your friends. I am currently using two "feed readers" which basically read an XML file on a website, which get updated whenever there is new content. The feed reader know how too read these files and displays them back in an organized way. I'm going to be giving two different readers that work exactly the same underneath, get used in different ways.

Google Reader is an RSS and Atom feed reader. Almost every website has an RSS feed. You can copy the URL of the website, give it to Google Reader and it will automatically find the feed and add it to your list of feeds. You can add multiple sites to Google Reader, so instead of having to go from site to site looking at the new content, you visit one site. Not only that, but your not forced to scroll through every story. You can set it up so it simply shows the headline of a story and you can decide whether or not you want to read the story. This is great for getting updates for blogs and new sites.

FriendFeed is another feed reader that is specifically for following what your friends or family is doing on the internet. There are over 30 different web applications FriendFeed supports. How FriendFeed works is, your friend has a account on FriendFeed where they add their information to their web apps. For example, you can add your Digg, Twitter, and Blog feeds to your FriendFeed. Whenever you do something on those sites like dig a news article that you like, write a tweet or publish a new post on your blog FriendFeed will know that it happened and compile it all onto one page. People can comment and mark that they like whatever gets posted on your FriendFeed so you can find new people that are interested in what you are doing on the web.

These are only a few ways you can access your news and follow what your friends are doing. You can see my Friend Feed at http://friendfeed.com/rcapote which is connected to my shared items in Google Reader. These web apps are a must for anyone into the web 2.0 scene.

Video: Being Productive

2008-03-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

I was reading a forum I regularly check on and ran into a post where someone had posted a link to a video about how to improve one's productivity. The video is roughly 45 minutes long and definitely worth watching. Almost all of the points and ideas he outlines can be fit into my life and could definitely increase my productivity. Definitely worth a watch.

Link to the video.

Game Programming Woes

2008-03-28T12:57:00.001-07:00

In the cross platform world...nothing is perfect. Trying to write an application, especially games, for multiple operating systems is not an easy task. There are pros and cons laying around like clothes in a college dorm room.

Trying to figure out how I want to write my game, what engines or libraries I'm going to use and how I'm going to insure that I will be able to develop and run my game on Windows and OS X. I have looked at several options and I have decided what I'm going to do.

I have looked at Python as the language and using Pyglet as the game library to provide the tools I need to draw graphics. Because Python is an interpreted language and does not get compiled to machine language, its slower than I would like. Also, I don't know Python so I would have to learn how exactly Python works and how to develop a game with it.

So I decided to stick with C++. Although it is a complex language and takes a good amount of time before you get something on the screen, I know it quite well and am comfortable with it. The library to provide graphics will be SDL, because it is cross platform and allows me to write straight OpenGL to have hardware rendered graphics.

Writing an application or game for a single OS is a whole lot easier than writing for two or three platforms, especially since there is XNA on Windows which is very awesome for writing XBOx and Windows games. When I get my Mac I will probably consider writing Mac only games...but right now I will just have to make sure my games are compatable with Windows and Mac.

Model-View-Controller in Game Design

2008-03-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

Lately my blog has been mostly product information and reviews, and I have yet to write whats on my mind and going on in my life, which is really what a blog is about. So I'm probably going to take my blog in a slightly different direction with the posts, but not too much.

When designing software, you have to design how the code is going to be structured how the pieces are going to interact with each other. Especially with OOP(Object Oriented Programming) languages, you must design the objects with how it will interact with other objects and how other objects will interact with it in mind. With OOP, there are different design implementations often referred to as Design Patterns. I have decided to use the Model-View-Controller pattern in my current project.

The Model-View-Controller design pattern is a popular design pattern because it is a great structure for separating the user interface, the logic, and the data from each other. Separating these different parts makes code easier to modify as well as easier to search for and fix bugs without having to change too much code. Model contains the data, controller is the logic, and view is the user interface.

In a game there is a type of object called an entity. Usually an entity is simply described as something that can effect the game. In most cases, the level does not effect the state of a game, while a weapon, character, or item does effect the game. I will be defining most objects using this definition. But how do I structure my code to fit the MVC pattern, make it logical and organized?

I read an article on Gamasutra about how to fit the MVC pattern into a game, and this is how I have worked it out for my game:

I have four different classes. Entity, EntityView, EntityControllerInput, and EntityControllerScript. Entity is the model, EntityView is the view, and EntityController* is the controller.

Entity will contain the methods and properties that an entity will have, such as setting the x/y coordinates of the entity, setting the state of the entity, etc.
EntityView will render the graphics and emit sounds for the entity.
EntityControllerInput will control the entity by an input device such as a mouse or keyboard.
EntityControllerScript will control the entity by executing a script.

These are the parts of the entity, but how do they interact? We have the data, controller, and view. The controller will tell the Entity to perform an action, and the view renders the sprite using information from the model. The entity has-an EntityView to keep things together so we don't have many classes running around.

EntityController
|
| Controller tells the entity what to do
\/
Entity
/\
|
| Entity renders based off the data. Entity has-a view.
EntityView

How exactly the entities will be stored, organized and handled dynamically, I'm still working this out. But generally, there will probably be a list of entities, I can loop through a list of entities and say something like entity->getView()->render() and loop through a list of controllers and just run a update() method.

Smash Bros Brawl Review

2008-03-26T17:44:00.001-07:00

Hey readers, I'm super sorry about not updating my blog in a while...you should see the viewers graph on Google Analytics!

Anyway, I promised a Brawl review so here it is. Super Smash Bros is a long lasting series from Nintendo that has been on every console since the N64. Smash Bros is a highly regarded arcade fighter, especially for competitions and tournaments. Is this iteration worth the $50?

Super Smash Bros Brawl sports several improvements over Melee. Better graphics with 480p and 16:9 support, higher poly models and maps, higher quality textures, smooth animations and physics, and orchestrated music to name the audiovisual improvements. The game also features a total of 35 characters, up from 23 in Melee, as well as a total of 40 different levels that are reminiscent of old school games.

Single player mode is not the main attraction for Smash Bros. The multiplayer fights are where its at with the series, and Brawl only enhances the experience. The game play is almost exactly the same as Melee. Some people say the action is slower than Melee, but I don't notice the slowdown. With the addition of Assist Trophies and Smash Attacks, newbies have a better chance of winning. Assist Trophies are items that you can grab and open to unleash a non-playable character that will attack your foe for you. Smash Attacks is the coveted orb that gives you the potential to send your foe in an nonreturnable journey off the map, which is the ultimate goal in the game.

But you may not always have a buddy around to own, so there is the single player game. You have Classic mode, which is simply you going through different battles until you get to the end boss. Then there is Sub Space Emissaries where you go through different levels following a story, similar to an old school platformer like Super Mario. I personally enjoyed the awesome and sometimes funny cut scenes, as well as the actual game. Definitely found my self wanting Nintendo to make some new platforming games in this style. Some players might find SSE to get repetitive after a while, but its not that bad. But what about the Wifi goodness?

Brand new to the series is WiFi mode where you can play with friends or with random players. The Wifi mode is great for playing with your friends, I've played with people on the other side of the continent and it was mostly lag free. Sometimes there is a 2 second delay between when you push the button and when the event actually happens, also, especially when you first start the Wifi game, the frame rate drops to almost slide show...but this quickly gets resolved and doesn't effect the gameplay. Although, because a vast number of people already own Brawl and are wanting to play online, the searching for random players has yet to work for me. The Wifi mode is a great addition to the already vast replay value.

But that isn't to say the game is perfect. I've encountered several bugs while, although they aren't completely show stopping, they are annoying if encountered. Also, the seemingly random 2 second delay from control press to event is annoying although this delay isn't always there. Despite these small inconveniences, the game is most certainly still playable and these issues should not discourage your purchase.

Overall, Brawl is a great game. I give it 9/10. The game is definitely worth the $50, the game will last the entire life of the Wii as the replay value is high. There are so many features in this game, that I could not cover in this article! So stop delaying and go get it now!

FireFox 3 Beta 4

2008-03-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

FireFox 3 Beta 4 Release Notes
Download

Mozilla has released a new beta for their upcoming browser, FireFox 3. This update mostly focuses on core features and speed updates. Faster Javascript engine, the user interface now matches the system on OS X and Vista. I've had it installed for a little while now, and it is quite snappy, and has yet to freeze on me. So go grab it if you know whats good for you!

"Firefox 3 Beta 4 includes more than 900 enhancements from the previous beta, including drastic improvements to performance and memory usage, as well as fixes for stability, platform enhancements and user interface improvements. Many of these improvements were based on community feedback from the previous beta."

Look forward to my review of Smash Bros Brawl this week!

Apple and Developers

2008-03-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

This Thursday, Apple held an event to show off their Software Development Kit(SDK) for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. As you may know, I am a developer. Although I've yet write an application(Aside from my blog that I'm still working on), I understand the workings behind development.

Awhile ago I posted about why I decided not to buy an iPod Touch. To recap, it was mainly the price against the feature set. It has some really cool features, but would I really use them? And what happens when I don't have WiFi connectivity? A few features get cut out. But possibly I have new reasons to get an iPod Touch.

The most awesome features that I saw out of that event were two fold. The API and the cool IDE

Firstly the API. The Application Programming Interface(API) which allow developers to do neat stuff such as the cool animations, do multitouch events and the like. Learning about these APIs and how many tools Apple gives developers makes me very excited to get a Mac and possibly develop for it. Because Apple has these APIs, it makes writing very proffesional and great looking applications very easy.

Apple has an Integrated Development Environment(IDE) called xCode. An IDE is a program that lets you edit the source code, orginize your project's files, compile the code, and debug the code. Compiling the code is converting the code from a human-readable format to the 1s and 0s the computer can read. Debugging the code is a task where you run the program, but you can step through each line of code to find where a problem or bug occures and why it occures.

When developing an application for the computer, you run the program and right next to the program you have the debugger running so you can see whats going on. But what if your development for the iPod Touch or iPhone? Apple has done two amazing ways to make development for these two products very easy and fast. First way is Apple has written an emulator for the iPhone. So you can run your iPhone or iPod Touch apps on your computer. Second way is, what I find, the most awesome. You run the application on your iPhone or iPod Touch, while the debugger is running on your computer. This is simply amazing, atleast to me.

During the conference, Apple showed off several different applications that were developed in two weeks. Two of which were 3D games that you might have herd of: Spore and Super Monkey Ball. Just like the Wii or PS3, the iPhone and iPod Touch have an 8 axis accelerameter. So, for example, in Super Monkey Ball the object of the game is to get a ball with a monkey in to through a narrow path and get to the finish line with out falling off the edge. Do control the ball, normally you would use the joystic to tilt the level and get the ball to roll. Instead, you tilt your iPhone or iPod Touch. Some say this could be a portable version of the Wii.

So developing applications for Apple products is an exciting adventure I'm going to try. Now I don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch...but I might consider an iPod Touch. It does cost $99 to be able to put your applications on your iPod/iPhone and to distrobute it through iTunes. That cost really is nothing compared to the requirements you need to develop for the Wii, DS, or PSP.

The Brawl Begins this Sunday!

2008-03-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

This Sunday is the day Wii owners have been waiting for since the launch of the Wii. Super Smash Bros is a series that is globally known as one of Nintendo's biggest games on their systems, and its finally coming to the Wii in North America.

Super Smash Bros on the Nintendo 64 broke ground allowing Link to fight against Mario and even against Pikachu. This made plenty of Nintendo owners very happy. They then launched the GameCube with Super Smash Bros Melee. That game was many levels above Smash Bros on the N64. Higher poly models, higher frame rate, more characters, and more detailed levels. This game lived through the GameCube's entire lifetime. Six years to be exact. But the most popular tournament game is about to be brought to higher standards.

Super Smash Bros Brawl was announced officially at E3 2006 with a surprise of the new non-Nintendo character Solid Snake. The introduction of this new character opened new possibilities for Smash Bros that weren't seen before. Previously, we only saw Nintendo characters. Along with Solid Snake, we have some other new comers such as Sonic that are not Nintendo properties. It is especially exciting to see Mario fight against Sonic just as they did in the 90s with the DreamCast and Nintendo 64 console war. But new characters and maps are not the only new features to look forward too. Full 16:9 480p support with an unstaggering 60 frames per second. With high poly models, high quality textures, and an awesome sound track, Brawl is a must-have game for any Wii owner.

Although Brawl has been out in Japan for about a month now, North America will finally be receive this highly anticipated game this Sunday, the 9th. This has received quite a few high praises and scores from major reviewers such as IGN. I will be writing a review of the game next week after I'e had a fair chance to play with it. Check back soon!

Twhirl 0.7 Released

2008-03-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

A new version of Twhirl, a Twitter client I posted about two days ago has released a new version with a great new feature. You can now cross-post to your Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku all from Twhirl. Click here for a rundown of the new features.

Blog Updates

2008-03-01T12:54:00.000-08:00

Hey readers, I want to give a thanks to everyone out there who is reading my blog. I just wanted to post about what is going on with the blog right now. As is obvious, I'm currently using Blogger as the platform for my posts. This will eventually change to run off of custom blog software I wrote. Which will be faster and sport new pages and some awesome features. I am currently unsure when I will launch the new site as of right now. The new site is mostly done, and I just need to finish off few features.

A week or two ago, I installed Google Analytics here so I can track the traffic on the page. Its interesting to see the views go up whenever I write a new post. Here are some interesting stats:

79% of the views are from referring sites.
11% is from people coming directly here.
9% is from search engines.

The story with the most direct views is my FireFox 3 Beta 3 Take 2 post, with the front page being the most viewed page.

So just thought I'd update you, hopefully I'll be able to launch the new site with a cool event like a live giveaway. I need to figure out the requirements for the give away tho, and what to give away.

Till next time,
See ya l8r

Twhirl

2008-02-29T21:18:00.000-08:00

Although I am becoming a bigger Pownce fan, I'm still keeping Twitter around while Pownce gains popularity. But to stay updated to Tweets and to send messages to Twitter, I recently stumbled upon a Twitter client named Twhirl.

It runs off of Adobe Air platform, which means it can run on any OS easily. When you first start up Twhirl, you setup accounts, you can have one account or several different accounts open at once. You can change the theme of the program, as well as the language. Once you login, you are presented with a window similar to Twitterific or MadTwitter. It has the user's avatar, their username, message, date posted, and where they posted from.
When you hover over a message, four buttons appear over the avatar. These are Twitter commands: send reply, send direct message, favorite tweet, and re-Tweet. Twhirl also has an extensive options menu with many options. Change the font, opacity, notification styles, and update intervals.

Which brings me to my next point, notifications. If you use OSX, you know what I'm talking about when I mention Growl. When someone sends a Tweet, a little pop-up will appear in your lower right corner of your screen with the name and the tweet that was received. This is a great feature so you don't have to keep the window open to see what was Tweeted.

I highly recommend using Twhirl as a Twitter client, it works great and is very fast. I have not yet found any bugs or problems at all, and is very stable! Check it out! http://www.twhirl.org

Skype

2008-02-20T22:44:00.000-08:00

Chatting over the net can be accomplished through various mediums. Whether its AIM, MSN, Yahoo, or through Facebook, MySpace, or even texting on your phone. Communication isn't exactly rare in our society today. But what about Skype? There are many services that allow you to chat. MSN and iChat allow you to do video conferencing and talk to your friend through your microphone. But these aren't always as stable or as good quality as we might want. This is where Skype comes in. Skype is a VOIP(Voice Over IP) client with the added ability to chat. Another very big plus that it important to me is that it is a crossplatform.

The VOIP capabilities of Skype are very good quality, and has great stability. You can call another Skype user, or buy Skype Credits to call a landlines. You aren't strictly required to talk to another Skype user. You can also SMS message someone. To call a landlines, cellphone, or SMS someone you must purchase Skype Credits. The price for calls are a reasonable $0.02(rounded) cents per minute. SMSing costs $0.11(rounded) cents per text in the US. You can buy Credits at a pay-as-you-go way of buying $10 of Credit at a time. You can also pay monthly. For $3 a month, you get Skype Pro which includes free calls to the US and Canada. For information on Skype Credits or Skype Pro, please go here for more information.

Skype also has video conferencing with one other person, which is free for Skype to Skype communication. The quality of the videos, while mostly depend on the connection and the quality of the camera, is great. Skype is also very stable. At least for me, MSN kept freezing and crashing entire only after a few minutes of running the camera. I've run Skype with video going for close to three or four hours and it is still running at its usually speed. No slowdowns. What does they say about the quality of the application? It says loads. No memory leaks!

Skype also is a chatting client just Like AIM. It has a nice layout, ability to edit your last message or delete it entirely. Don't forget the usual emoticons and buddy icons. You can customize the look of Skype, as well as customize the sounds. Skype is a great chat client, that is cross platform. It runs in Windows, Linux, Macs, Windows Mobile, WiFi Phones, Cordless Phones, and Nokia N800/N810. I highly recommend using this client for phone calls as well as a chat client.

http://www.skype.com

The Death of HD-DVD

2008-02-19T14:41:00.000-08:00

Ever since high definition televisions have overthrown the market, the want for high definition content is on the rise. DVD is no longer the top dog in the arena. HD-DVD and Blu Ray are the next generation discs that can store almost ten times as much data as a normal DVD. Ever since the unveiling of these two formats, it has been a way between which would win. And since the beginning of '08, nails have been hammered into the conffin of HD-DVD. These are some big nails in the coffin:

And the very last nail in the conffin, Toshiba(the chair company of DVD Forum, who created HD-DVD) will announce that they will discontinue HD-DVD players.

February 19th - Toshiba will stop making HD-DVD players

All of those people who spent a good chunk of their money on Playstation 3s are pretty happy right about now.

FireFox 3 Beta 3 Take 2

2008-02-16T21:28:00.001-08:00

My last post about FireFox 3 Beta 3 was more of a simple overview of what was going on with this version. I'm going to go into some more detail and outline some features of FireFox 3.Quicker bookmarking and addon searching. Searching your history, and unified theme.

Bookmarking Websites is a feature pretty much everyone uses. FireFox 3 simplifies the process of bookmarking a site by adding a star icon in the URL bar. When you click it once, it quickly book marks the page, and the star goes from gray outline to a golden star. When you click the star again, you unbookmark it. If you click the star twice you get a nice popdown where you can set tags and the folder to store the book mark, as well as the name of the bookmark. This makes bookmarking web pages quick and simple.

Previously, searching for add-ons required you to visit Mozilla's site and search that way. In FireFox 3, they added the ability to search for add-onsright in the add-on window.
The search is very fast, and mostly accurate. It will only show results that are compatible with your version of FireFox. This feature saves lots of time weeding through long lists of add-ons, and having to deal with compatibilities.

Although I don't know what to call this feature, it is my most favorit feature of FireFox 3. When you type a word or phrase into the URL bar, it will search your history for that word. So it will search the page's title, URL, and content for whatever the keyword you type in. This is best shown through a screenshot.
Lastly, unified themes. FireFox 3's default themes match the OS. Whether its XP, Vista, Linux or OSX, FireFox 3 now matches the OS its running on. Especially for those running on OSX, this is a big deal becasue previously FireFox did not look very Mac-ish and didn't feel right with the rest of the OS.

FireFox 3 Beta 3 has some great features. Enhanced bookmarking, add-on searching, URL bar search, and unified theme makes FireFox 3 something to definatly keep on the radar.

FireFox 3 Beta 3

2008-02-13T21:52:00.000-08:00

FireFox is a great browser. Its light years ahead of Internet Explorer and Safari in terms of features, extensions, speed, and standards compliance. I use FireFox for different reasons which are out of the scope of this article because I could do a whole article on why I use FireFox(Upcoming post?). I've been using FireFox 3 Beta since Beta 2, and Beta 3 came out this week so I decided to give it a try.

It is very stable, stable enough for everyday use. It is fast, loads pages quite speedily...especially Javascript intensive pages such as Google Docs, Google Reader, and so on. In previous versions of FireFox, people complained about memory leaks causing slowdowns. I can tell you Mozilla has done a great job to eliminate memory problems. With http://live.pirillo.com, my Blogger's post editor, and Google Reader open, This is the memory usage(On Windows XP):

As you can see, it isn't hogging the CPU very much at all, and the amount of memory it is using is very small compared to previouse versions of FireFox.

Extensions are a huge part of FireFox. In Beta 3, a lot of the extensions have been updated to be compatible with this beta. The extensions I use are Download Status Bar, Adblock, Shareaholic, and Google Notebook. All of these extensions work in Beta 3, plus more. This is great news for those who need extension capabilities.Mozilla has also changed the look and feel of FireFox to match the OS theme. So if your on XP, it matches XP. If your on OSX, it looks like a Cocoa app. This is great for ingeration and the feel of using the browser. Makes it feel like apart of your computing experience instead of some addon. This is especially big for Mac users, because previouse versions of FireFox did not match the OS look and feel, giving FireFox a distant feel.

FireFox 3 also promises future XHTML and CSS compliance with support for XHTML 2 and CSS 3 which gives web designers much more control over the look and feel over their site, as well as following the standards of XML. On the Mac, most people use Safari since it is the default browser. Unfortunatly, few of the Google Apps are supported on Safari(Google's fault or Safari's?) And I use these apps frequently. So support for these sites is a big deal for me.

FireFox 3 is looking up. Great speed, memory fixes, OS integration, and standards compliance makes FireFox a great browser to use, and FireFox 3 especially so.

No iTouch In My Hand

2008-02-12T21:55:00.000-08:00

I wrote a post a little while ago outlining reasons why the iPod Touch is attractive to me, and why I was considering one. Tonight we went to the Apple store, and I had the chance to pick one up. I decided to not get one. I will outline my reasons below.

Calendar and Notes were two big reasons why I wanted to get an iPod Touch. Having a calendar right in my iPod, as well as keeping notes in in the same location would be very useful. I could see my self using these features...but this isn't enough to justify the $300 price tag.

My current iPod is the last generation iPod Nano, which cannot currently play videos. I would like to be able to watch the videos somewhere besides at my desk. Personally, I don't watch/plan on watching enough videos nor do I travel to many places where I would need video entertainment. And I am eventually going to get a Laptop so being able to watch videos while in bed or just mozing around the house isn't going to be a big problem. So video playback still isn't worth the $300.

Web browsing with a fully featured web browser right in the iPod is a great feature. Would I use this? Probably not. The only place I have internet access is at my house, so if I am anywhere but my house...I don't have a very good chance of finding a WiFi hotspot, let alone enough time to fire up the browser and do anything. So this still isn't worth the $300.

So these reasons I am not going to purchase an iTouch, I can't really justify the price and if I will use the features I have named. Will I ever buy one? Depends. If they lower the price then possibly...but even then I'm not sure if I need it. So if I'm not going to spend the money on an iPod, what am I going to spend it on? If I achieve the rank of Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts, my advancement/accomplishment gift is a $1,500 towards a laptop and with that I am going to get a Macbook. So with the money I currently have, I will probably buy a nice 22" or 24" LCD screen for my Macbook so I can have some sweet space for my apps. I'd also probably buy the Aluminum Bluetooth keyboard by Apple.

OSX 10.5.2 Has Landed

2008-02-11T14:26:00.000-08:00

Today, Apple has released OSX Leopard 10.5.2 update. This is a larg update of OSX, a large number of security fixes, stability fixes, as well as some new features. Some of the major highlights are List View and Folder View for stacks, and the menu bar's transparency is optional.

For more information about updates go here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307109

For more information about security updates go here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798

I do not currently have a Mac, so I cannot comment on how well it performs or if there are bugs. What I can say is that I think the two new views for Stacks is a great fix.

iPod Touch

2008-02-08T20:54:00.000-08:00

Apple makes some great products. Currently, I only own a last gen 4gb iPod Nano. So I'm stuck with nothing but audio. I bought it a little over a year ago(January of 07), and since then Apple as released the new revision of iPods. All iPods now have cover flow, as well as the Nanos can play movies/videos. Also since the time I bought my iPod...Apple has introduced the iPhone and iPod Touch.

As of late, the iPod Touch as caught my attention. Partially because I can afford it now...but primarily because of the sweet features it has. As I stated before, my current iPod is limited to audio. I have recently acquired an interest in some video podcasts. Tekzilla, System, and DL.TV to name the main ones. So currently the only way I can watch these video podcasts is through iTunes on my computer. This work fine...but usually when I'm on the computer, I'm distracted by other things. Browsing the web, chatting, and sometimes schoolwork. Also, I enjoy watching music videos...just something about watching music video that gets me into the song more than just listening to the song itself. So the video aspect of the iPod Touch is a big plus for me. I can also rip DVDs to it, and watch DVDs if I'm ever on a road trip or whatever.

But next to some great video playing capabilities on a great screen, are some cool apps. Full Safari browser, Mail, Calendar, Notes, Weather, Stocks, Maps, YouTube, and iTunes store. Did I mention that the iPod Touch has WiFi? So I could browse the web in the bed without needing a whole laptop. This great for times that I really don't want to wait for the computer to boot up...no matter how fast it boots up. A really simple device like this can turn on in a record time.

Calendar and Notes is probably the next app I will use. Currently...I rely on my, sometimes not so great, young mind to remember what I have to do. While most of the time my brain works...there are times where it fails. I'm not getting younger by any means. So being able to have a Calendar and a Notepad right in my iPod is a good deal. I could defiantly see this coming in handy.

Mail is also great. I'm not sure how often I will use this feature, but I'd defiantly try it out. I'm really not that big of an email person. I don't communicate much by email.

Weather and Maps apps seem like useful apps. The Weather probably more so than the Maps. I was at the Apple store in Irvine, California...and the Maps app didn't seem to work. A new feature on is it can find your current location using WiFi beacons to pinpoint where you are. I was in the middle of the Spectrum in Irvine and it couldn't find me. It only works on WiFi hot spots that are in the list. But it still could work for finding directions.

There is also a YouTube and iTunes store. When I tried out the iPod Touch...the YouTube app took a little while to load...and even then it wasn't able to play the video. It might have been their connection...so I wasn't able to fully test this feature. The iTunes store is a cool feature...I could defiantly see my self using it. Buying songs through the iPod itself is defiantly more convenient than plugging it in, and having to sync it.

So, buying an iPod Touch is what I'm currently thinking. I'm mostly just trying to see how it would fit into my every day life...and if I would actually use it to it's fullest extent.

Twitter and Pownce

2008-02-05T15:49:00.000-08:00

There are many ways to update your status, and quickly share stuff with your friends. There is Twitter and Pownce. These two apps are somewhat common. Mainly, you can share stuff with your friends.

Twitter is the simpler of the two. You have an account, you can follow people and people can follow you. You post a message with a max length of 140 characters, and these gets sent to your feed, and who ever is following you sees these updates. You have a main stream page(mine can be found here) which people can check out what you have posted to see if your interesting enough to follow. When people follow you, they can have your updates either be emailed to you, text to your phone, or none. So this is a fun way to tell your friends what your upto. You can also send a text to Twitter from your phone, updating your status on the go.

Pownce is everything Twitter is, but a bit more feature rich. You can send messages, but you can also send files up to 50mb(100mb if you pay), embed music or videos, send links, as well as have Events. So lets say you setup a group of your gaming friends. You can setup an event for playing Call of Duty, and only tell your gaming friends to come play with you. These let you share stuff with your friends, better than Twitter does.

I currently have an account for both Twitter and Pownce...but not many people update their Pownce. More people update their Twitter. So I'm more active in the Twitter scene because that is where the action is. Another downside to Pownce is they don't have the ability to update it through texting. That is probably a major reason for Twitter being more popular. So I would like to see texting added to Pownce, and see more activity on Pownce. Maby a Twitter Pownce merger?

rTV Episode 3 - Cars

2008-01-29T22:27:00.001-08:00

I had a guest speak on today, Greg. We talked about cars...something I don't know much about. My brother also dropped in. :P

Show Notes

Open Office 3

2008-01-28T14:54:00.000-08:00

According to this article, Open Office 3 is going to be the best version yet. Some features I am extremely excited about:

Native OSX version
Email App
Calendar and Task Management with Google Calendar integration.
Google Docs integration
Blog and Wiki editing

Final version to be released in September, betas to be released in the coming months. Expect a beta review from me!

Random Stuff of the Net

2008-01-27T22:11:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting hear with some chocolate cake on the my desk. I was picking at the crumbs with a tooth pick, when I decided to blog about random web sites that I think are interesting. Hopefully some of this will entertain you.

Chris Pirillo Live - Chris Pirillo is a tech guy who brodcasts from his office 24/7. Later at night he records some shows. The people in the IRC get to be in the video! Check it out!
UStream - Have a webcam? Broadcast your own Webcast live over the internet!
Viddler - A YouTube alternative that is loads better than other video hosting sites. Higher resolution, video commenting, tagging, and commenting right in the video's timeline. You can also make money from ads on your video.
You Are An Idiot - If you are talking to someone on the internet, and they say something stupid, send them this link.
Homestar Runner - These are some funny Flash cartoons.
Google Reader - A great RSS Reader that I use all the time.
Google Notebook - A great way to keep notes in the cloud. I also use this frequently.
Blue Letter Bible - This is a great resource that allows you to search the Bible quickly.
Skype - Sweet free chat/VOIP program...light years beyond AIM or MSN.

So I recommend you check these sites out, and hopefully they will be of some use to you.

NICKHD?

2008-01-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

Well, I was surfing the channel guide this morning when I ran into a channel called NICKHD. Never seen that before. Could it be true? Nickelodeon cartoons in HD? So I clicked it, and lo and behold some Spongebob goodness in HD quality. It was very sharp. Only downside is it wasn't wide screen, had two black bars on the side. But that's probably because the cartoon wasn't drawn in 16:9.

Google Docs

2008-01-25T22:15:00.000-08:00

Google Docs has been around for a while now, despite still being in beta. There are three different office apps in the Google Docs suit. Document, Spreadsheet, and Presentation. Google Docs also has some other very nice features that I have started to use recently.

The Document app is a basic text editor. It has has all the needed functionality to create some useful text documents. You have all the basic functions of a text editor, text styles, alignment, bullet points, hyperlinks, etc. In the File menu of the app, you have a good number of export options. You can export to XHTML(zipped), RTF, Word, Open Office, Text, and even a PDF. You can also export it for use in Presentation. It also has word count feature as well as find and replace feature, both of which I have yet to use.

Spreadsheet is a as the name decalres...a spreadsheet app. It has basic text formatting functions, number, currency, and date formatting, Chart creation, as well as multiple sheets in one document. I have used spreadsheets for basic charting of my blood pressure, but thats about it. From what I have used of it, it is great for a simple spreadsheets.The spreadsheet app has a "sort" tab that allows you to sort your spreadsheat columns, selecting either ascending or decsending. It also allows you to freeze a couple of rows to prevent it from being sorted. Formulas are a big part of spreadsheets, and Google has not left them out. There is a formulas tab with almost every formula you could ever want. And they work very well too. Spreadsheet has a few export options aswell, cvs, html, ods, pdf, txt, and xls.

The last app on the list is Presentation. While I have not used this app, I did explore it for a little while. What it does is allow you to create a presentation and either view it in fullscreen mode, or allows you to walk through the presentation over the web through people you invite. I'm going to talk about inviting people a bit later.

There are a couple of very useful features that are common to all apps. First is the revisions tab. You can view each and every edit done on the document, similar to a Subversion server or the history page on a Wiki. In addition to this feature, are some very useful multiuser features.

You can share your document with other people, either as contributors or as viewers. Contributors are allowed to edit the document. Google Docs will let you know if someone is currently editing the document, or when the last time the document was updated and by who. This is a great feature, as I am using it for my upcoming rTV episode's show notes. Me and a friend or collaborating on the show notes. You can control some access that contributors have, such as allowing contributors to invite other people to edit/view the document.

Viewers and Contributors have a special tab called "discuss." This tab allows anyone viewing or editing the document to chat.

When you are done with a document and you plan to publish this for public viewing, Google docs allows you to publish your document and gives you a URL that links directly to an HTML version of the document. This is great for show notes like I have been doing.

Google Documents is a great web app that has some very useful features that would have not been possible without the online nature of the app. The only downside is that the apps currently do not work in Safary, only in Internet Explorer and FireFox. Hopefully Google will fix this. I highly recommend Google Docs!

Blog Name

2008-01-24T22:22:00.000-08:00

The Celestial Waste of Bandwidth, Lockergnome, Leoville...all great names of well-known internet blogs. Blog names are something I've always wondered how they work. What makes a name so great, and just stick into the mind of viewers? Is it the relations between the words? The meaning of the words? Or is it much simpler than that? Such as simply hearing the name over and over by people of higher blogging status?

Tonight, for the past three to four hours, I've been scouring dictionary.com and thesaurus.com trying to come up with a good combination of words and meanings. I also had a rhyming dictionary in a tab at one point. I searched through those sites, I searched through my vocabulary book for school, and I searched through my geometry book for terms that are interesting. Sticking random words at the end...did not always work.

Through my searches, I just randomly tacked words on the end or beginning of "blue." You see, blue is my favorite color. It also is an aspect of a new design of the blog I'm designing behind the scenes. Names such as Blue Theory, Blue Postulate, Blue Transversal came up during the sifting through my geometry book. While those are somewhat good names...they sound too intelligent and my blog posts probably could not hold up to the standards.

But they weren't always good names. Blue Travesty...while it sounds good, it doesn't have that great of a definition. Travesty means a horrible imitation. I don't want to be a horrible imitation. I also sorted through my small knowledge of programmer-slang. Blue Boolean, Abstract Blue, Encapsulated Blue. They sound good...and have a good meaning. But they are big words that people might have a hard time remembering...much less understanding

Some bloggers use their own name as the headline of their blog. While this is a good idea, my name doesn't fit very well...as it has some attachment to some slightly infamous people from the past. Using my personal name for the blog just seems a bit egotistic. I also wanted a name that sounds like it could be a software company...I am a programmer after all.

So I decided upon Blue Aspect. I like the color blue, and my Blog color scheme has aspects of blue. I thinks its a good name...for now. I've had several different names, and changed between them. Hopefully this one will stick.

Here are some tips for finding good blog names.

Search Google for blog names. Sometimes reading names of other blogs can inspire you and give you ideas.
Use a thesaurus. Using words not commonly used is a great way to be original.
Try to have some sort of connection to what your blog is about. Okay, okay...Blue Aspect isn't a great blog title following this postulate. But my blog has blue in the color scheme so it works. Dice, and Bungee don't have titles relating to game development.
Use your imagination. Sometimes short phrases work good as titles too. "Steamboats are Ruining Everything" "The Day in the Life of Bob"

http://www.dictionary.com
http://www.thesaurus.com
http://www.google.com

rTV Episodes 1 & 2

2008-01-23T17:18:00.000-08:00

rTV is my Webcast show that I try to record weekly. The past two episodes were related to MacWorld. My next show will be about cars...a subject I am quite foreign to so that will be an interesting episode...especially because we get to have a guest so its not just me blabbering on the camera the whole time.

I recorded these videos through ustream.tv so they are low quality. I uploaded them to Viddler...because I'd rather have more editing control instead of just live video.

rTV Episode 1 - MacWorld Predictions

rTV Episode 2 - MacWorld Conclusion

Welcome to my blog!

2008-01-23T17:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my new personal blog. I'm generally going to be blogging about whatever comes to my mind that is worthy to be blogged...usually what happens in my life or something relating to technology. So keep me bookmark'd or rss'd!