My Pwincess

Mutil Tasking is stupid

I have been saying this for years. The problem with multi-tasking is that at the end of the day the brain (or computer) can only do one task at a time.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Slow Down, Multitaskers; Don’t Read in Traffic Think you can juggle phone calls, e-mail, instant messages and computer work to get more done in a time-starved world? Read on, preferably shutting out the cacophony of digital devices for a while. Several research reports, both recently published and not yet published, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car. In short, the answer appears to lie in managing the technology, instead of merely yielding to its incessant tug.

Rsync Rocks

I have used this for backup and file mirroring ... it works great!

clipped from lifehacker.com Geek to Live: Mirror files across systems with rsync

Part Deux

The truth is out

Very Fitting

clipped from scripts.mit.edu

FIRST Robotics

When I was at clarkson I was on the FIRST team ... cool stuff.

clipped from gizmodo.com FIRST Robotics Competition: Like Battlebots with Fewer Saws This weekend was the FIRST robotics competition at the Javits Center here in NYC, an event where groups of students compete to see who built the best robot in the six-week competition window. How it works: The core of the high school–level FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is the design and building of a robotic competitor. Each year in early January, FIRST unveils the competition or "game" at an annual kick-off event that is beamed by NASA satellite to auditoriums all over the world. This is the first glimpse students get of the game they will have to design their robot to play. Working in teams, students have just six weeks to create their robot. They get the opportunity to work with programmable radio controls, pneumatics, motors, electrical circuits, mechanics, machining, web design, computer animation, computer assisted design, and other technologies—just like professional engineers and technologists do.

JTable Size Columns

I was trying to find a way to auto size columns of a JTable much like the functionality of excel. I found out that that was a real pain, so I decided to just set specific sizes for the columns. This is the code I came up with:

TableColumn column = null;
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
    column = table.getColumnModel().getColumn(i);
    if (i == 2) {
        column.setPreferredWidth(100); 
    } else {
        column.setPreferredWidth(50);
    }
}

GI Joe

Works for me ...

This has been the developers battle cry for years! I have to admit I have used it more then once.

clipped from www.codinghorror.com You might think attaining such a prestigious, rigorous level of certification would be far too challenging. But fear not! Participating in this innovative new application certification program is as simple as pressing the F5 key on your keyboard. Just follow the four easy steps Joseph outlined: Compile your application code. Getting the latest version of any recent code changes from other developers is purely optional and not a requirement for certification. Launch the application or website that has just been compiled. Cause one code path in the code you're checking in to be executed. The preferred way to do this is with ad-hoc manual testing of the simplest possible case for the feature in question. Omit this step if the code change was less than five lines, or if, in the developer's professional opinion, the code change could not possibly result in an error. Check the code changes into your version control system.

Chuck Reading His Favourite Facts

The Ferret Heads

Smelly

This is a product I can get behind or rather on ... or whatever

Test

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

while(1) { print "stuff"; }

Step 2 ????

I was famous once

In a past life I was a winner and subsequent finalist of the Embedded Linux Journal NIC Contest. That was a fun project. I wish I did more of this sort of innovative development. I think my recent calendar sync project is an attempt to get back into some more serious development. I really want to latch onto a open source project and give back to the community.

clipped from www.linuxjournal.com NIC Contest And the winners are... Well, here they are, the winners for the NIC contest. First, let me say that we had a lot of really good entries. Knowing that we only had 20 systems available, we tried to distribute the winning ideas to various industry areas. Thus, you will see home systems, industrial testing systems, retail systems, kiosks and at least one system just for fun. Home Appliance Interface (HAPI), by Shawn Bower, Gerry Mletzko, Kris DeMuth, Steve Ernst and Peter Halliday

Creepy -- Photo of the Day

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Crazy

Dad we are hungry

Dad we are hungry
Originally uploaded by Drizzt51.

These are two hungry little puppies ... they are good eggs most of the time!

Photo of the day

Calendar Sync

Im going to be embarking on a project of my own. I want an application to sync my oracle calendar (used for work) and my google calendar. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to make a general calendar sync program. So I put together a little spec. Please take a look at it and give me comments please! I'm going to keep you all updated on the progress here!

Kill -9

Pete sent me to this video

Tasers are bad ....

clipped from gizmodo.com

Tasers: More Dangerous Than We Thought?

CrunchGear did an investigation into the safety of tasers, and what they discovered is a bit troubling. Despite the fact that Taser International just loves zapping reporters to get themselves on the news, they also sue the pants off of anyone who does studies on the safety of their devices and gets results they don't like.

It turns out that getting tased might, surprise surprise, be bad for the ticker. So think twice before sasstalking officer friendly next time you're out causing trouble, OK? –Adam Frucci

The Trouble With Tasers - What The Manufacturer Doesn't Want You To Know [CrunchGear]

Kill a process in VB .Net

Recently I found my self in need of some code that would kill off all instances of a process. Here is what I came up with:

Dim myProcesses As Process() = Process.GetProcessesByName("QTPro")
Dim myProcess As Process
For Each myProcess In myProcesses
  myProcess.Kill()
Next myProcess

One note on this is that the process name is the name without the extension. Eventhough through task manager it list the process name as QTPro.exe I had to use QTPro

Libby found guilty

Shouldn't Cheney be held accountable for the actions of his direct report. Its hard to believe that Cheney didn't know what was going on, but then again we are talking about a guy who shot his friend on accident, maybe he really doesn't have a clue whats going on.

clipped from nytimes.com

For Cheney, Political Toll May Follow Libby Verdict

Dick Cheney’s critics, and even some of his supporters, say the vice president has been diminished by the proceedings.

I wish I could be more like Wally

Sounds like a good idea .... until you think about it

This sounds like a good idea on paper, but would you really want it on your car. If my car alarm malfunctioned while I was doing 60 mph it would be annoying but not the end of the world. If this new Fog Alarm malfunctions Im going to crash and burn. Its neat but I would never ever put it on my car.

Photo of the Day

clipped from lava.nationalgeographic.com

Folder Share

Probably one of the best little application I have come across in a while is FolderShare. It allows you to sync files across multiple computers.

Here is what I like:

• Fast (this thing doesn't slow my machine down at all)
• Real Time
  
• Cross platform (I love my mac)

What I don't like:

• The UI leaves a lot to be desired
• Didn't complain when my mac couldn't connect (firewall issue)

Right now I'm using it to sync my documents and my grease monkey scripts across my machines and it couldn't be easier. This is a must for those of us who use multiple computers.

Just what I always wanted

Finally I can play legos on line massively and stuff.

Wrestle Mania 5000

Boys will be boys .....

The lamest thing about GMail

The most annoying thing about Gmail is that you can save searches ... so lame. Of course someone out there felt my pain and wrote a user script to fix it. Another reason why Grease monkey is the coolest thing since sliced bread.

So go forth and save ye GMail searches

clipped from blog.persistent.info

Adding Persistent Searches to Gmail #

If you haven't already, install the excellent greasemonkey Firefox extension.

Open up this user script (in Firefox).

From the "Tools" menu, select "Install User Script.." and confirm all of the various prompts.

Go to your Gmail account (some refreshing may be necessary).

There should now be a "Searches" box on the left size, below the "Labels" and "Invite a friend" ones.

Clicking on a search executes the saved query. To refresh result counts, click on the refresh icon in the upper right corner.

Use the "Edit searches" link to customize your persistent searches.

As a bonus feature, all threads now have a "Toggle font" link which switches the message font to a fixed size one - great for reading source code.

Shutdown Windows with a text message

This is a pretty sweet/scary idea.

clipped from lifehacker.com

Shutdown Windows with a text message

Basically you setup a rule in outlook to look for say a keyword in the subject line of an email. Then you select run application as the action for when that keyword is found.