Saturday, October 18, 2008

Losing Some Steam

Oh no! I just realized the other day that some of the core code in the Android side of my Top Secret Project is going to have to be re-written. I am very sad about this and have started to lose a little steam. It doesn't help that I've spent the past two weeks letting the feeling linger while I hung out with friends in Toronto. I have one week before I'm back in Chicago for a bit and while I don't think I'm going to be able to make my app launch-ready by Wedensday (The G1 Launch Date) I feel like the app *is* coming along to some capacity. I sometimes dream of having a team of Engineers working with me on this project, all as dedicated as I am. If that were true, the past two weeks, each and every one of them would have written a total of 0 code for the app. I guess its a good thing right now that I'm not running a startup or anything like that. Who ever heard of a startup stopped because some crazy country up North decided to abscond the dude in charge?

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Thursday, October 2, 2008

Catchup with two hands

its been six days and its time again to leave SF for a new place. I'm going to be in Toronto until the 15th. I'm in for work but ahould have plenty of time for fun. Heck, as I'm good at doing, I am in Toronto over a 3 day weekend too.

I have taken this whole week off of work, including Friday but excluding part of monday. In that time I have  been able to catch up on several months of life. I got a haircut, went clothes shopping and had several Hendricks (great gin, thanks for the recommendation josebiro) Martinis. I have also added a few more needed features to the top-secret prokect and am still looking for someone to do some UI design work, I could also use someone who is interested in mobile applications, python, java and/or javascript because I think I need more people to work on this if I'm going to get this completed in any reasonable amount of time.

On one hand, I see that I am making steady progress. Every day that I sit down and focus on it, I walk away at the end with something newer and better than before. On the otherhand, some of the ideas that propelled me to work on this project seem so far away in the future that I'm worried ill never get to the cool problems that will make this project stand out. Heck, I've no doubt pumped some people (including myself) up about this and I'm sure it won't meet anyone's expectations.

On the other hand, I'm still happy about the work that I have completed, I just wish it hadn't taken four months to get here. My thought is that in the next few days ill start using the app on my own and see if in its current state it is usable. If not, I'm going to have to take a hard look at what it will take to make my project get there. if not I will have several months of rewrite ahead of me and I will surely have lost the first to market edge.

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Wednesday, August 20, 2008

I'm back... San Francisco, Gen Con and more.

Wow, I've been on the road, almost all summer and am finally back in San Francisco. I would have to say that my travel bug is back -- Expect to hear from me on the road more frequently than I've been, during the past year. I believe I will be travelling to Chicago, Dublin, Sydney and Toronto in the next couple of months and I will hopefully track that travel a bit better than I did most of this summer's escapades.

It feels good to be back in San Francisco -- after almost two years of living here, it finally feels like home. I was even a bit homesick by the time I hit my last week in Dublin but by the time I left Chicago for San Francisco, I was thinking "Where do I go next." I guess homesickness is fleeting.

Gencon -- Wow! I had such a great time seeing my gaming friends. Even through we didn't play all the games we hoped we would, I still had a great time. Next year though we better execute better. Less standing around, more doing things. Less shopping, more doing things. Less stress, more doing things!

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Monday, December 5, 2005

Toronto Trip Map

Who ever said it was easy to make a Google Maps mashup was totally correct. Its cake! On our trip to Toronto, I took geocoded snapshots along the way using a web cam. The end result is my Toronto Trip Google Map

The code I use to generate the map is in my arch repository and in my snapshots. I used a python script to generate the XML. I do plan on making it more generic so that I can do this for more trips, all automated like.

As mentioned at Google Maps Mania

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Thursday, December 1, 2005

MINI Toronto trip Computery Goodness

This Time

while $(/bin/true); do
  timestamp=`date +%y%m%d_%k%M`
  lat_long=`echo "p"|netcat -q 1 localhost 2947|sed 's/GPSD,P=//g'|sed 's/ /_/g'`
  filename=$timestamp"_"$lat_long".jpg"
  echo $filename
  gqcam -t JPEG -s -d /home/jlapenna/trip/photos/$filename -v /dev/video0
  sleep 60
done

to snap a photo every minute and name it $timestamp$latitude$longitude.jpg in a directory of my choosing. I started gpsd using: 

gpsd /dev/ttyUSB0

but that does not work on a consistent basis.

To get maps as appropriate, I created three waypoints corresponding to the prime locations we were going to be around in this short trip, chicago, IL; toronto, ON and lansing, MI. I then ran: 

gpsfetchmap.pl -w WAYPOINT -sc "5000,15000,30000,50000,200000,500000,3000000" -a 5 --mapserver expedia -u miles -p

replacing WAYPOINT with home (chicago), toronto or lansing

Turns out something fishy happened with the lansing maps so they weren't accurate.

Next time

For next time I will investiage gpsdrive replacements, up to and including the possiblity of running WINE/VMware and a windows application. There are no good choices that I know of for navigation on linux.

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Monday, November 28, 2005

Toronto!

Josh, Candi, Joe and I drove to Toronto (Joe only to Lansing) on Friday and retureturned today. The trip was exciting and quite a bit of fun. Thanks to Shelia for the hospitality and fun times. Thanks to Greg as well for joining me at my first Rave and thanks to Ben and Bonnie for the invite.

Talking with Shelia I've decided to make one big life change. I'm going to attempt to start a Polyphasic Sleep Cycle. Ultimately I think it will fail, but this is worth a shot. It seems to have worked for some people and unlike most, I have job that would accomidate the changes in sleep behavior. Coupled with a hoodie to cover my eyes I expect to have little difficulty getting my naps.

The idea behind Polyphasic Sleep is that you force your body to go immediatly to REM for ~25 minutes every four hours. I guess this is what Kramer did in an epsidoe of Seinfield. I hadn't known that before I learned about this.

My first of (hopefully) many naps occured at 11pm on the drive home. I didn't sleep as I was not tired, but didn't open my eyes for 25 minutes. The time is now 5:23am, my next nap will commence in two hours and 37 minutes. I feel awak right now but was nearly falling asleep at 3:30am when I took my second nap.

I was thinking we might do this again in December, but then again I don't want my warrenty to expire with in a year of getting my car. That would be bad news.

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Thursday, October 20, 2005

Social Darwinism

My friends Chris and Steve developed a theory called Social Darwinism. Just as in Darwin's Evolutionary survival of the fittest; the theory supposes that over time those people who are not strong enough friends will fall away and that the remainder will be a closely knit batch of true friends. Fallout can occur a number of ways: One is through transformation into a monster, (Screwing multiple friend's girlfriends or multiple friends (note the apostrophe) girlfriends, etc.). Actually, writing this down, it seems that Girls are a pretty quick tool for becoming a monster. Another, through less evil act of fallout is moving more than one hour away from your friends. (Michigan == 30 minutes away, Brookfield == 25 minutes away, Canada ~45 minutes away, Chicago == 3 hours away)

So what happens when an otherwise good friends leaves the state for greener career pastures? How can this person stay in close contact with his friends and how will he prevent himself from becoming a pariah? I think you can stay good friends with someone even if you don't see them every weekend or even every month. It takes effort and if you think your friendship is valuable, that effort becomes a non-issue.

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Sunday, May 22, 2005

Chillin

Today was the first day since I got to Toronto where I didn't do anything exciting . . . and that was exciting in and of itself. I woke up late, hacked on my website, watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Great flick, I suggest seeing it if you have the chance) then more hacking . . . that is until work struck and I've spent the past three hours working on a fairly important problem.

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Friday, May 20, 2005

Recent Developments

Heh, I Karokeed yesterday. Prior to that and after leaving work Ben, Dean, Amit, Kyung, Graham and I went to Hooters. This Toronto Hooters had the best looking waitresses of the Hooters I've been to previously. I suppose saying that proves I'm as shallow as most guys but I'm not going to lie. I didn't suggest going there though. The wings and Poutine were tasty though, much better than the last time I went there. Afterwards we went to a karokee bar. I've never been to a Karokee bar before, and it was a fun experience, too bad I made a total fool of myself. :-) We followed that up by going to Fox and the Fiddle. I saw Jay there and said hi. Amit got so trashed I had to help him home and of course we were 25 minutes late for work. We're such slackers. I found out today I get to stay an extra two weeks up here in the great white Canada. So that means to those people who were going to go to Canada the week after the NERO kzoo event I suggest that you come to Canada the week prior.

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Monday, May 16, 2005

Busy Me in Toronto

I've been very busy during my stay in Toronto. I hung out with De a couple of times, went to bars almost every night, worked like a madman during the entire week, got into a head-on collision (I wasn't driving, nobody was hurt besides bruises), went on the subway, did some shopping and more.

The week in review:
Monday: Arrived in Toronto, without luggage (United decided they weren't going to ship it.) Worked, went to the Drake Hotel, which is a pretty cool place. (Photos to come, and one already posted.)
Tuesday: I hung out with De cause I was finally able to get in contact with her. We went to Fox and the Fiddle, Artful Dodger, Milestones and walked all over the place. It was great catching up with her.
Wedensday: Hung out with TC and saw "the Canadians" place. Its nice, except for the cats which need to die, quickly.
Thursday: De's Former Indaho going away party, went to Rol San at 1:30am with De and Mike Wise, yay fun. I remember now why I didn't remember what happened wedensday, it's because I got my days all mixed up.
Friday:Friday night was spent at a bar, "pub," with a bunch of one of my coworker's former coworkers along with a couple of TO residents and fellow travellers. At this pub there was COFFEE PORTER . . . yes, coffee flavored beer. It was excellent.
Saturday: I spent the afternoon walking along Queen Street, from Yonge to Niagra, I even did some shopping, afterall there were tons of shops to visit on that street.Saturday night I went to Dance Cave, drank too much and danced to some current-rock music (eg rock music that is on the radio right now)
Sunday: Chilled with my homies, aka coworkers.

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Wednesday, March 23, 2005

On a Roll!

Oh yeah, while I'm losing more friends, I thought it a good idea to expound on this whole blog thing. Since when did "Web Log" become "Place where I write about my feelings all the time so people will pity/extole/praise/hate me?"

In an effort to lose more friends here is some social commentary from your currently reigning champion of Asshole . . . me.

Chad
You keep doing what you're doing, your stories are at least interesting, if a bit trite.
Chris
Less whining, more substance. Tell us something interesting you learned in school, or about how many beer bongs you dealt with last week, that is interesting.
Ferarrrararararara
Your stories are too long, so I don't read them, but your posts about what you are doing are pretty interesting. Keep up the stellar work.
Gina
You hate me cause I'm a nasty drunk wierdo, you are saved from commentary.
Joe
What the hell are you doing writing about your feelings, you *were* doing a good job, now you suck.
Kelly
More academia talk, less feelings talk. When you want to talk to someone, call them on the phone, which seems like you've been doing, so good job on that.
Matt
The day you actually have any content (feelings or otherwise) in your "Write about my feelings all the time so people will pity/extole/praise/hate me place," I will die, almost as much as when I found out you had a job. Until you actually have something to write, save a keyboard and don't even type.
Shelia
Good job running away from this crap.
Zane (Mike B.)
You have an incredible blog, I enjoy hearing what you do every so often. You have a good idea about what this is all about.
josH
I swear, you were doing a good job at this blog thing, with your entry about Toronto and the dirty ears and what not. Then you had to go and ruin it by trying to tell a story . . . Good job on the story, bad job on the readily apparent oozing of emotion. Then again, I could be wrong.

So the moral of the story is: Less feelings, more rock. Kind of like pop music. Also, if you want to hear what I have to say about your feelings in public, the way you all keep posting about your feelings in public . . . keep on doing it. I will get my licks in and I will be an asshole! Or . . . if you prefer, do the adult thing and talk to people, phone, im, email, US fucking Postal Service, I don't care, there are better ways to communicate your feelings than by posting on a billboard right off of 94 saying you are sad today (not as bad as posting your feelings in a WEB LOG)

So as they say in the great book:
So long [feelings] and thanks for all the fish!

In other words, feelings stink.

Assholishly yours,

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